The undesirable fluid losses due to leaks constitute one of the bigger problems in industrial installations, refineries, power stations and, in general, anywhere there are moving or stored liquids or gases, with enormous, occasionally, environmental and economic repercussions. Acoustic Emission offers a very effective solution to this problem and has been widely used for detecting and locating known or suspect leaks in buried pipelines. Access to the pipeline is required only every about 100-200m for mounting AE sensors. Pipeline is pressurized in 500-1000m sections at a time, while the AE sensors detect the turbulent flow at the leak orifice, and, with the use of digital AE systems and specialized data acquisition and analysis software, provide the position of the leak. The method has been proven effective, fast and accurate in detecting and locating leaks, and it is now being used also as a preventive leak control tool for long underground transfer pipes or short, buried pipe sections, such as dikes and road crossings. The present paper deals with the technical description and the physics of the AE leak detection technique for buried pipelines, presents the advantages, limitations and requirements of the method, describes the necessary modern AE equipment for performing such a task, and, reports on specific case-studies of successful buried pipeline leak detection and location. The paper also presents results from the application of the novel concept of preventive leak detection which has been applied in numerous buried pipeline short sections, dikes and road crossings within industrial facilities, as well as in long distribution pipelines.
Acoustic emission leak detection of buried oil pipelines, river and road crossings
Schallemissionsleckprüfung an vergrabenen Öl-Pipelines, Fluss- und Straßenquerungen
2010
10 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 9 Quellen
(nicht paginiert)
Conference paper
Storage medium
English
ACOUSTIC LEAK DETECTION FOR UNDERWATER OIL AND GAS PIPELINES
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