Pipescan

Over 10 million kilometres of pipelines in Europe carry hazardous fluids. These include oil, oil products, chemicals such as solvents, caustics, acids, corrosives and combustibles and gases, often at high pressure and temperature. These pipelines are subjected to corrosion by the environment and by the contents. Other defects in pipes are caused by mechanical fatigue. The inspection of a great majority of pipes is mandatory to ascertain their structural integrity, as failure to inspect can result in leakage of hazardous material into the environment and even explosion.

Up to 90% of these pipelines are inaccessible for inspection by current inspection methods because they are:

• Buried under concrete.
• Buried underground.
• Underwater.
• Covered with coatings such as paint and insulation.

Corrosion and defects in inaccessible areas of pipelines can remain undetected until a leak occurs due to pipeline failure. Pipeline spills of hazardous fluids into the environment outnumber all other sources (e.g. tanker spills in oceans etc.) combined. In Europe up to 20 million litres of oil are leaked into the environment per year.

The consortium worked together to develop a set of mechanised inspection techniques, sensors and systems for finding defects and corrosion in inaccessible pipe (i.e. pipes buried underground, in concrete, in water or covered with insulation) without the need to "dig up" or remove coatings.

For its part, KCC successfully designed, developed, tested and deployed the man-machine-interfaces (below) and provide on-going software development skills.