Conduit monitoring
AssigneeQinetiq Limited
InventorsDavid John Hill, Magnus McEwen-King
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for monitoring a fluid carrying conduit by introducing an acoustic pulse into the conduit, and interrogating an optic fibre positioned along the path of said conduit to provide distributed acoustic sensing. By measuring the response at each of a plurality of locations, a conduit condition profile can be derived. A condition profile can be obtained quickly and easily with minimum disruption to the pipeline infrastructure and contained flow. Existing optic fibres running along the path of a pipe can be employed for sensing purposes, allowing relatively long spans of pipeline to be monitored with only limited access to the pipe.
Claims10
A method for monitoring a fluid carrying conduit comprising a pipeline the method comprising the steps of:
- interrogating an optic fibre positioned along the path of said conduit to provide distributed acoustic sensing;
- passing a pig through the pipeline, the pig generating (inducing) at least one acoustic pulse as it passes through the pipeline;
- measuring by distributed acoustic sensing the response to said at least one acoustic pulse at each of a plurality of discrete longitudinal sensing portions;
- and
- deriving from said plurality of measurements a conduit condition profile.
Pipeline monitoring apparatus comprising:
- an optic fibre interrogator adapted to interrogate an optic fibre and provide distributed acoustic sensing;
- a processor adapted to receive sensed data from said interrogator in response to acoustic pulses generated by a pig passing through the pipeline and to derive a conduit condition profile from said sensed data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.