Robotic ILI of an Unpiggable Small Diameter Natural Gas Pipeline in an Urban Area
(Room Conference Hall)
05 Apr 18
9:30 AM
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11:00 AM
A robotic crawler was successfully used to assess the integrity of a natural gas pipeline partially buried under an urban area for a major North American pipeline. The first of its kind, the reduced size robotic crawler was able to traverse a 10” pipe—a size limitation that had previously made this pipeline “unpiggable” using other ILI methods. Designated as a high consequence area (HCA) due to being located in a densely populated urban area, this section of pipeline had never been inspected on account of a variety of factors—in particular, characteristics that made it unsuitable for traditional smartpigging and its narrow, 10” diameter. However, as per regulations regarding HCAs from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) in the United States, the piping now requires integrity management programs. Due to the piping’s inspection challenges, the pipeline operator was faced with mandated replacement of it barring finding some novel means of inspection.