Literature Review: Theory and Application of In-Line Inspection Technologies for Oil and Gas Pipeline Girth Weld Defection

Feng, Qingsong; Li, Rui; Nie, Baohua; Liu, Shucong; Zhao, Lian-Yu; Zhang, Hong

doi:10.3390/s17010050

Cited by 90 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…They are always the weak points of the pipelines due to the field joining and worsened laying locations because of limited right-of-way. GW defects of newly built pipelines are much narrower, which challenges the traditional ILI technologies and analyzing methods when detecting, and are more dangerous because of higher diameters and pressures [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of USCCD on Girth Weld Defect Detection of Oil Pipelines

Dai

Feng²,

Xiang³

et al. 2020

Applied Sciences

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Globally, more and more attention has been paid to the integrity of Girth Welds (GW) of oil and gas pipelines due to their failures with high consequences. A primary concern is that defects originate during field construction but over time may be subject to external loads due to earth movement. GW defects in newly built pipelines are also assumed to exist but would be much smaller in size, and more difficult to detect, which motivated the investigation into minimum defect detection capabilities of the inspection technologies. This study presents the evaluation results of UltraScan™ Circumferential Crack-Like Detection (USCCD) technology for oil pipeline GW inspection, based upon the pull test and in field data from Inline Inspection (ILI) of pipeline by PetroChina Pipeline Company (PPC) using GE PII (General Electric Company, Pipeline Integrity Inspection) 32" UltraScan™ CCD Tool. The performance of USCCD is given according to the ILI data, pull test results and dig NDE (Non-Destructive Examination). It can be concluded that crack-like defects with clear edges can be detected during ultrasonic propagation; however, the irregular shape of weld makes the inspection more difficult. It is still a challenge to identify the type of defects, and depth sizing can only be classified not quantified, which would require more excavations. However, this technology is feasible for the alternative technology of GW defect inspection.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of USCCD on Girth Weld Defect Detection of Oil Pipelines

Dai

Feng²,

Xiang³

et al. 2020

Applied Sciences

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“…To meet the rapidly growing demand for oil and gas, the construction of trunk pipelines which can operate in high-pressure, high-speed and high-capacity conditions has been increasing in recent years, giving the pipelines larger diameters, thicker pipe walls, deeper burial depths and larger transportation distances [2,3,4,5]. Due to corrosion and high-pressure loadings on the pipe wall, pipeline failures including defects, deformations, blockages, leakages and explosions occur every year, resulting in serious risks to pipeline safety [6,7,8]. In China, it was reported that there was a pipeline failure every 4 km [9], and in the USA, the economic and human losses due to the significant pipeline incidents in the past 20-year period are $7 billion and 330 fatalities along with 1292 injuries, respectively [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Sensitivity Real-Time Tracking System for High-Speed Pipeline Inspection Gauge

Piao

Guo

et al. 2019

Sensors

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Real-time tracking of pipeline inspection gauges (PIGs) is an important aspect of ensuring the safety of oil and gas pipeline inline inspections (ILIs). Transmitting and receiving extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic signals is one of the preferred methods of tracking. Due to the increase in physical parameters of the pipeline including transportation speed, wall thickness and burial depth, the ELF magnetic signals received are short transient (1-second duration) and very weak (10 pT), making the existing above-ground-marker (AGM) systems difficult to operate correctly. Based on the short transient very weak characteristics of ELF signals studied with a 2-D finite-element method (FEM) simulation, a data fusion model was derived to fuse the envelope decay rates of ELF signals by a least square (LS) criterion. Then, a fast-decision-tree (FDT) method is proposed to estimate the fused envelope decay rate to output the maximized orthogonal signal power for the signal detection through a determined topology and a fast calculation process, which was demonstrated to have excellent real-time detection performance. We show that simulation and experimental results validated the effectiveness of the proposed FDT method, and describe the high-sensitivity detection and real-time implementation of a high-speed PIG tracking system, including a transmitter, a receiver, and a pair of orthogonal search coil sensors.

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“…The problem of missing sample points of information increases when the PIG runs inside concave and convex pipe sections like pipe elbows [21] because they are the pipeline sections where corrosion is most likely to occur due to fluid stagnation [22]. In addition, the missing echoes affect the post-processing techniques applied to the thickness mesh construction (many post-processing techniques interpret each pipe wall thickness acquired as one pixel of an image) [12,23,24,25,26]. Therefore, the reliability of the fault detection falls until the detection capacity is not admissible (80% being the minimum acceptable value according to international standards [4,5]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Validation of an Articulated Sensor Carrier to Improve the Automatic Pipeline Inspection

MARTINEZ

Rodríguez-Olivares

Torres-Torres

et al. 2019

Sensors

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Pipeline inspection gauges (PIGs) carry out automatic pipeline inspection with nondestructive testing (NDT) technologies like ultrasound, magnetic flux leakage, and eddy current. The ultrasonic straight beam allows technicians to determine the wall thickness of the pipeline through the time of flight diffraction (TOFD), providing the pipeline reconstruction and allowing the detection of several defects like dents or corrosion. If the pipeline is of a long distance, then the inspection process is automatic, and the fluid pressure pushes the PIG through the pipeline system. In this case, the PIG velocity and its axial alignment with the pipeline cannot be controlled. The PIG geometry, the pipeline deformations, and the girth welds cause a continuous chattering when the PIG is running, removing the transducers perpendicularity with the inspection points, which means that some echoes cannot be received. To reduce this problem, we propose a novel method to design a sensor carrier that takes into account the angularity and distance effects to acquire the straight beam echoes. The main advantage of our sensor carrier is that it can be used in concave and convex pipeline sections through geometric adjustments, which ensure that it is in contact with the inner pipe wall. Our improvement of the method is the characterization of the misalignment between the internal wall of the pipeline and the transducer. Later, we analyzed the conditions of the automatic pipeline inspection, the existing recommendations in state-of-the-art technology, and the different mechanical scenarios that may occur. For the mechanical design, we developed all the equations and rules. At the signal processing level, we set a fixed gain in the filtering step to obtain the echoes in a defined distance range without saturating the acquisition channels. For the validation, we compared through the mean squared error (MSE) our sensor carrier in a straight pipe section and a pipe elbow of steel versus other sensor carrier configurations. Finally, we present the design parameters for the development of the sensor carrier for different pipeline diameters.

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Literature Review: Theory and Application of In-Line Inspection Technologies for Oil and Gas Pipeline Girth Weld Defection

Cited by 90 publications

References 58 publications

Application of USCCD on Girth Weld Defect Detection of Oil Pipelines

Application of USCCD on Girth Weld Defect Detection of Oil Pipelines

High-Sensitivity Real-Time Tracking System for High-Speed Pipeline Inspection Gauge

Design and Validation of an Articulated Sensor Carrier to Improve the Automatic Pipeline Inspection

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