EMPIT - one of the Top 5 finalists in a race for the Innovation Award at the PPIM Conference and Exhibition
Pipeline Pigging and Integrity Management (PPIM) Conference and Exhibition is the largest event dedicated to pipeline safety, reliability, and efficiency on a world scale. Today PPIM is recognized as industries primary forum that draws together pipeline operators and service providers enabling them to exchange experience and showcase advancements in tool and system that will play a role in solving modern day challenges.
2022 is the year when EMPIT has joined the PPIM forum in Houston.
And without wasting any time, with our very first attempt we have already managed to enter the Top 5 Innovator list and join the race to win the Innovation Award of 2022. The time has come for CMI to shine as we put forward our drone facilitated Current Magnetometry Inspection (CMI), which has already inspected more than 1,800 miles (ca. 3,000 km) of pipeline world-wide. Our air-based inspection can determine pipeline geometry in 3D space, Depth of Cover (DoC) as well as mechanical stress that plays a crucial role in pipeline integrity. Our drone has been designed to navigate inaccessible terrains and high-risk locations. It can even be deployed in locations right after they have experienced seismic events.
The drone is fully automated to find and follow buried pipelines without any prior knowledge. It does so through finding the central axis of the pipeline and manoeuvre over it whilst performing continuous measurements and movement forward. The drone is intelligent enough to map the pipeline with an uncertainty limit of 1 inch (2.54 cm) and to determine horizontal and vertical bends with an accuracy of only 0.1°. And what is even more interesting is that it does all of this while maneuvering around any obstacles that are in the path of the pipeline. The possibility of combined determination of 3D position, depth and bend geometry (angle, length, radius) of buried pipelines allows to determine meaningful information about the smallest pipe movements and the resulting mechanical stresses. All of which together provide crucial information about the changes in pipeline integrity.
Follow the link and visit the PPIM Innovation Award to find out more about EMPIT’s UAV based inspection technique.
It’s for a reason that we are amongst Germany’s Top 100 innovators. Because our mission is to overcome these inspection challenges and, together with our clients, continuously improve the safety and reliability of all pipelines.