CMI PIGGABILITY ASSESSMENT USED FOR A BURIED GAS PIPELINE TO PROVIDE THE ENGINEERING BASIS FOR REDESIGN WITHOUT ANY EXCAVATIONS

One of our customers is taking a step towards the greener energies and is converting one of their major pipelines for Hydrogen Gas. To comply with government regulations, they must verify pipelines integrity state using ILI tools. Since this pipeline is unpiggable they need to make geometry adjustments and remove any bends that are smaller than 3 D. To minimize any down time, they require a detailed geometry overview which identifies areas in need of adjustment without any excavations.

Current Magnetometry Inspection (CMI) offers an unconventional method for a cost effective and reliable piggability assessment for the fraction of time and effort required by excavations. Being equipped with high resolution GPS, our drone assessment is an innovative method that delivers accurate and precise geometry verification. Our AI based software performs a high quality data analysis determining horizontal and vertical bend geometries. This data can then serve as the basis for future design and/or construction works.

One of the verified bends on this pipeline had an angle of 82.4 degrees and radius of 1.8 D. Upon excavation our client confirmed that our results were highly accurate and precise with minimal errors that did not exceed our specified bend angle and radius measurement uncertainties of 0.1 degrees and 0.5 D respectively. Thus, they went ahead with EMPIT provided results and used them as the engineering basis for this pipeline’s geometry redesign to accommodate ILI integrity inspection.