Pipeline Monitoring Systems

WHY MONITOR PIPELINES?
If pipelines leak the consequences are tragic for people, the environment and reputations, hence operators have built up a range of technologies and tools to ensure pipeline integrity.
Fiber optic distributed sensing brings a new dimension to integrity monitoring. It is a technique which uses an external fiber optic cable, often included during pipeline installation for communications, to detect leaks, ground movement and third party intrusion. Including an Omnisens Lynx system transforms a fiber optic cable into a continuous, real time monitoring system at minimal extra cost. This valuable new technique helps operators detect the earliest stages of threats to the pipeline, giving them time and information to respond before disaster strikes.

We detect, locate, and classify in  real-time dangers along the entire pipeline with pipeline monitoring systems.

We ensure fast and accurate on-line monitoring of internal corrosion and bacterial activity in pipelines by continuous monitoring of fluids and gases under real-life conditions using pipeline monitoring tools.

AOC Provides on-line analysis of chemical treatment programs.

Applications

• Crude, Wet Gas and Refined Product Pipelines
• Plants & Refineries
• Pipeline Terminals and River Crossings
• Offshore Platforms and FPSOs

Each Lynx system offers a range of high performance interrogators:

• Leak detection:

Raman and Brillouin Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) detect temperature changes from which leaks can be inferred. Ground water movement and erosion can also be thus detected.

• Geohazard effect and ground movement detection:

Brillouin Distributed Temperature and Strain Sensing (DTSS) is sensitive to movements of soil along the pipeline way which may, for example, result from a landslide, rock fall or seismic event. The strain induced on the optical fiber sensor installed on the pipeline right of way provides the earliest detection and location of the event.

• Intrusion detection:

a dedicated system based on fiber optic distributed Vibration/Acoustic Sensing (DVS/DAS) detects intrusion.
Omnisens is uniquely placed to supply a Lynx pipeline integrity monitoring system to suit each pipeline’s or pipeline integrity management system’s requirement.

Performance: Omnisens Lynx combines the measuring performance of Omnisens DITEST (for the earliest detection of leaks and/or ground movement) and Omnisens DIVA (for intrusion detection) with Omnisens Map user Interface to provide a cost effective pipeline integrity monitoring solution.

Omnisens DITEST and DIVA interrogators monitor distances in excess of 40 km. The spatial resolution of DITEST is set during configuration and stays the same along the distance range. High optical budget gives an optical fiber installation margin. Omnisens Raman based DTS is suitable for shorter pipeline lengths.

Sensitivity: Incipient temperature (leak), strain (ground movement) and vibration (intrusion) events can be detected and localized early, giving the operator time to take action.

Communication: Status and detected events can be communicated in real time to a range of third party systems. Omnisens follows Information Security Management guidelines to ensure information integrity, availability and traceability.

Cost effective and flexible: If fiber optic cable is being installed with the pipeline, using some of the fibers to provide leak and intrusion detection is done at minimal additional cost. A fiber optic cable for ground movement detection is more specialized. For leak detection (temperature monitoring) of shorter pipeline lengths Omnisens Raman DTS is available. It requires multimode sensing fiber and does not provide ground movement detection.

The system comprises:
Omnisens DITEST interrogator: provides powerful and robust measurement and location functions. The measurements of temperature and strain are computed, annunciating alerts when project specific criteria are exceeded for any zone along the pipeline. A small temperature anomaly (early sign of a leak) or fiber strain (first indication of ground movement) can be located to within a few meters over the entire monitored distance.
Omnisens DIVA interrogator: detects and analyses vibrations around the pipeline right-of-way enabling accurate and efficient event detection/localization and classification into threat and non-threat events. All activities in the pipeline ROW (normal or unauthorized) are detected, localized and defined as threat or non-threat depending on the measured vibration characteristics.
Monitoring software for processing temperature, strain and vibration data, generation of alerts as well as data handling and storage in a proprietary database.
Interface and communication to third party systems via TCP/IP communication or relays.
Sensor: usually a standard single mode fiber optic telecom-munications cable installed with the pipeline.
Omnisens Map: ‘see at a glance’ GIS interface which identifies the location of an alert on the route associated to its KPs and GPS coordinates and enables visualization of event evolution.