General Electric’s in-line inspection tech keeps pipelines safe
Ultrasound techniques borrowed from the medical field probe stretches of old pipe
The old method of examining pipeline integrity only provides a crude strength rating at the moment the test is done. SCC is a creeping form of metal fatigue akin to skin cancer that sneaks into steel over long periods. The cracks begin as microscopic blemishes then multiply into colonies and deepen, with the spreading driven by multiple causes such as combinations of variable pressure inside the pipe and soil chemistry outside.
Foreman, a 53-year-old English engineer transplanted from Newcastle to a GE service center in Calgary, has been on the trail of the elusive pipeline contagion since 1977. It is no accident that the British pioneered the detection technology, he says.
The United Kingdom only has about 17,000 kilometers of high-pressure pipelines. But the network is under homes, schools, hospitals, shopping districts and offices of 50 million people who are guaranteed both safety and fuel supplies in exchange for tolerating its existence. British Gas launched scientific work on ultrasound pipeline inspection at a company research station in 1975, soon after the birth of North Sea fossil fuel supplies.
Canada has more than 540,000 kilometers of pipelines for oil, natural gas and their fiery products like propane, gasoline and jet fuel, the NEB estimates. Most of the lines, and especially big high-pressure mains, are far from population concentrations.
No fatalities have been blamed on Canadian pipeline failures caused by SCC, which have chiefly occurred in remote wilderness or farming areas. But the metal disease jumped to the top of national transportation safety and energy regulatory agendas when ruptures accelerated in the 1980s and early ’90s, with experts pointing out that energy transportation infrastructure dating back to the ’50s and ’60s was aging well beyond best-before times built into standard 25-year life spans for industrial projects. The plague hit nine pipelines. TransCanada’s continent-spanning network had the most cases.
The outbreak eventually included dramatic explosions on stretches of pipeline in busy places, calling public attention to a formerly obscure engineering problem. A rupture beside the Trans-Canada Highway in northern Ontario blew pipe out of the ground and a big piece landed on the road. In another violent failure near an affluent Winnipeg suburb, a brief but spectacular fire lit up the sky and reportedly incinerated a family cat.
The British were recognized leaders at in-line inspection technology by the time the NEB handed down the report of its exploding pipeline inquiry. The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the U.S.-based Pipeline Research Council International and Gas Research Institute, and British Gas collaborated on early mobile ultrasound machines with an annual science budget of about $3.5 million.
The effort continued after pipeline inspection was spun off to an investment firm in 1998 by a corporate restructuring that split British Gas into BG Group plc and Centrica. GE bought the industrial ultrasound enterprise in 2002 and doubled the research and development budget. “There’s a lot of technology going on,” Foreman says, describing improvements in the works such as increasingly sensitive sensors and flaw location markers.
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