Maintenance of oil pipelines is an issue of great concern for oil companies. Any possibility of leakage must be detected before the leakage occurs and a preventive action should be taken in order to avoid losses of oil and ecological disasters. One of the main causes of oil pipelines leakage is the corrosion of the bottom part of the pipeline due to accumulation of water and other corrosive substances. One of the methods used to check the conditions of the oil pipelines is the running of a data acquisition device through all the length of the pipeline (that can be km) to gather information about the corrosion and its position inside the pipeline. This device is commonly referred to as pig. The Brazilian oil company, PETROBRAS, wanting to have the technology of such device to detect corrosion in their oil pipelines proposed to the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Escola Politecnica da Universidade de Sao Paulo a joint project to the development of a pig that could run uninterruptedly in long oil pipelines gathering corrosion data for the preventive maintenance of their oil pipelines. The result of the project was the development of an ultrasonic pig with 16 ultrasonic transducers with on-board energy system and acquisition and storage systems. Also, comprised in the presented solution was the development of a software to analyze the collected data and give the position of the corrosion spots along the pipeline. This paper presents in detail the implementation and design issues related to the development of the ultrasonic pig. Also, some experimental data will be shown as confirmation of the effectiveness of the developed system.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Autonomous system for oil pipelines inspection


    Additional title:

    Ein autonomes System zur Pipelineinspektion


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Mechatronics ; 9 , 7 ; 731-743


    Publication date :

    1999


    Size :

    13 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 5 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




    BURIED PIPELINES INSPECTION SYSTEM USING DRONES AND BURIED PIPELINES INSPECTION METHOD USING THE SAME

    JANG YOUNG SEOB / KU BON CHANG / HUR SAM SURK et al. | European Patent Office | 2024

    Free access

    Robotic inspection system for unpiggable pipelines

    Torbin, Robert / Leary, William / Vradis, George | Tema Archive | 2004



    Inspection of lined pipelines with in-line inspection tools

    Shatat, A. / Korz, M. / Russell, D. | Tema Archive | 2011


    Inspection of Pipelines Based on Reliability

    Acevedo, J. M. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000