Overcoming the Challenges and Increasing Value in Fiber Optic Monitoring

Pipeline safety is a top concern for the general public,governments, and energy companies. Leaks can be caused by integrity failures due to sudden ruptures, accumulated strain, ground movement, etc. Pipeline companies rely on a number of technologies such as mass balance systems, aerial surveillance, and inline inspection tools to monitor the integrity of their pipelines on a regular basis. Fiber optic pipeline monitoring has the advantage of continuous monitoring in both time and space. Deploying the fiber optic cable on, near, or inside the pipe effectively transforms it into a powerful suite of distributed sensors. Hifi Engineering’s HDS technology utilizes the power of high fidelity fiber optic dynamic sensing to detect small changes in the optical path length between two adjacent fiber bragg gratings, which are used as low angle wavelength reflectors. These perturbations are representative of the strain, vibration, acoustic, and thermal energy which is applied to the fiber optic sensor.

Distributed fiber optic sensing has been gaining significant momentum in pipeline industry adoption. The primary application of this technology has been in preventative leak detection, but intelligent new applications such as pipeline flow rate monitoring are now emerging and promise to deliver extra value to the pipeline operators….[Hifi Engineering presents] a high fidelity dynamic sensing system (HDS), which is capable of sensing acoustics, temperature, strain, and vibration over long distances in, on, or near a pipeline….the practical considerations and challenges of deploying this technology in the field, including long distance fiber jetting, on and off the pipe placement, deployment in existing conduits, placement underneath riverbeds and roads, internal deployment, and micro-trenching.
Overcoming the Challenges and Increasing Value in Fiber Optic Monitoring
Pipeline Technology Journal Special Issue 3/2020 p.26
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