SUMMARY OF THE TECHNOLOGY:
It’s called a “pig” ( Sorry to Muslims out there ).
One of the major ways pipeline operators detect corrosion is with a “pig,” a machine that travels down the inside of a pipeline looking for problems.
Pigs are not new — the industry has long relied heavily on them—and the newest generation of pigs, known as “smart pigs,” is considered an improvement over the pigs of yesterday. Smart pigs give a read on the state of the pipeline, such as cracks, corrosion, and metal loss. Operators receive this information in a control room and can then dispatch crews to fix the problem. As of 2012, 93 percent of pipeline inspections were conducted using smart pigs.
The real innovation comes from the Pipeline safety company Fox-Tek, a subsidiary of Augusta Industries (CVE: AAO), which uses such a system to detect corrosion, as well as a fiber optic system to detect bends, strains and stress in pipelines.
Theirs is its data analytics package. Companies that use smart pigs usually need to spend months doing post-inspection analysis, but Fox-Tek has developed proprietary software that does continuous and automatic analysis.
Fox-Tek’s sensors gather information and automatically send back confidential reports on everything the company needs to know – temperature, pressure, strain, rates of corrosion, etc. in the form of handy graphs, charts and diagrams. It eliminates the need for an army of people to go out and inspect pipelines and then come back to do the analysis.
The pipeline safety market is massive and growing, but one of the major hurdles for new technologies like advanced sensors and software will be reluctance by pipeline companies to proactively invest in corrosion management and maintenance. In the past, they have largely focused on the bare minimum and viewed safety as a regulatory requirement.
I am reading of technologies that micro-polish the inside of pipes and their is also a plasma to apply a Diamond Like Coating that would add a hard coating to the piping. Can old pipes be retro-processed? danged if I know. New Pipelines add these processes from scratch? Sure. The point is would they reduce corrosion and testing and maintenance a great deal? That is the question I’d like answered...
The headline assumes the argument of “pipeline safety” is really about that. Of course it’s not. “Safety” is just a smokescreen for the eco-Nazis. Always has been.
119,000 barrels in 2013 is a drip out of the faucet. that’s damn good. the sky is not falling!!
42 gal in a barrel
The "safest way" of moving these products has " an unacceptable rate of safety mishaps." The solution obviously being to use methods that are much less safe.
Do these people even read what they produce?