bsi Remote UT Monitoring drives rapid roi & risk reduction
Situation: A major interstate gas pipeline with gathering & processing operations was starting up a wellhead in a remote location in Pennsylvania that required ATV transportation to access the piping for integrity monitoring. The concern was erosion-corrosion which is a complicated and expensive problem. Wear rates are known to be uneven and are dependent on product size and density, sand and fluid impingement velocities and angles, and component geometry. This affects pipe intersections, injection points, elbows and reducers. Current practice requires the dispatching of personnel to the remote locations in order to conduct inspections of these assets using a variety of non-destructive inspection techniques. The problem is that those inspections only provide give a one-time snapshot of component the health and they are costly. Any piping failures have high safety and environmental consequences risks. The need was great to improve component maintenance, replacement planning, predict costs, and prevent pipeline failures and the catastrophes that follow.
Solution: The KERR team recognized the problem proposed a continuous monitoring system designed to establish erosion-corrosion profiles, and predict wear-corrosion rates. Berkeley Springs Instruments LLC (BSI) automated online integrity monitoring system for precise and consistent wall thickness monitoring of facility piping and pipelines. The Eagle Array and system can be configured for any diameter, while in operation and under pressure. It is nonintrusive and can be removed or reattached without any interruption of plant operations. The Eagle Array can be viewed as a smart digital health monitoring system that is capable of operating below ground, submerged and in harsh environments. The product also provides the user with a host of environmental monitoring options such as corrosion, vibration/seismic, temperature/humidity and potential third party intrusion alerts. Real time alarming and text-messaging is provided when mechanical health thresholds are reached. Data is transmitted via a mesh network to the Internet through cellular or Wi-Fi.
Results: BSI value proposition was a win-win for the client who recognized improvements in safety performance, reduced overall costs and greater reduction of environmental risk. BSI significantly reduced the risk of the client’s well-head piping failure by providing real time information about the condition of the asset and a projection of its condition into the future. The information can be audited, exported and available 24/7 without dispatching or exposing personnel to risky operational conditions or remote locations. All data is analyzed and formatted per American Petroleum Institute (API) guidelines. Additional benefits include reduced labor and associated overhead costs. Continual and automated monitoring is a critical factor in prevention of the next catastrophe.
