August 2024 Vol. 79 No. 8
Features
First look: PipeSense uses pressure waves for leak detection
By Corrina Hunt, Contributing Editor
Pipelines, especially those that carry water, can be hundreds of miles long – so it may not always be simple to know for certain that a leak has occurred, let alone pinpoint the problem.
“Being able to be made aware that a leak has occurred and identify the location is very powerful for an operator,” said Josh Holmes, vice president of sales for PipeSense.
Created in 2023, PipeSense is a pipeline monitoring and leak detection company which offers an advanced leak detection system utilizing innovative AI technology to detect operational anomalies in real time, reducing the potential operational impact.
“We’ve been running since October,” Holmes said. “New company – not necessarily a new technology. The technology has been in development since 2018.”
PipeSense is already a player in the chemical and oil and gas pipeline industries. This year, they’re bringing their technological solutions to the water pipeline industry.
“PipeGuard is our 24/7/365 monitoring solution,” Holmes said. “It’s a noninvasive approach where we’re monitoring pressure and specifically looking for anomalies that happen inside a pipeline that create pressure waves.”
Pressure waves are going to happen regardless, but PipeGuard can detect whether it’s an anomaly that the client should be concerned about, he said.
“We’re able to see with near-certainty if a leak has occurred within minutes and where that leak is located, because a leak has a very unique signature,” he said.
Hunting pre-existing leaks
The company also uses PipeScan to look for and identify pre-existing leaks, which can be challenging for operators to realize and identify leading to continuous product loss, he said.
“It doesn’t matter to us what’s flowing through a pipeline,” Holmes said. “What matters to us is pressure; pressure is our friend and that’s what we’re utilizing to provide this leak detection solution. We’re looking for that instantaneous moment when a leak happens, and that is what we’re identifying and confirming – that a leak is a leak, or if it’s something else such as a valve opening and closing, or something that’s created an anomaly along the line that operators would not need to worry about. We don’t care about flow rate, we don’t care about volume; what we care about is pressure, whether it’s water, crude oil, refined product, chemicals, gas … we’re agnostic when it comes to what’s flowing through a pipe.”
Water leaks may not pose the same risks as oil, chemical or natural gas leaks, but they create situations where a municipality may not be getting the water inflow it needs.
“We certainly see that in Mexico City,” Holmes said by way of example. “I believe the figures are an estimated 35 percent of the water that should be flowing into Mexico City is being lost due to preexisting leaks.”
In many cases, a small leak may go undetected until it becomes a bigger leak, and consequently, a much bigger issue. The company’s full suite of services, PipeSentry, also offers pig tracking technology PipeTrack, and PipeTest, a hydrotest monitoring system backed by AI data analysis. Both PipeTrack and PipeTest are generally more applicable to chemical, oil and gas pipelines than water infrastructure; regardless, with the company’s continuous monitoring solution – available globally – issues created by small leaks which otherwise may go undetected can potentially be avoided.
Thus far, PipeSense has seen success and company officials are pleased with the awareness it has been able to bring to the industry, he said.
“In a short amount of time, we’ve been able to deploy our systems to multiple operators in multiple scenarios, in high-consequence areas…and for multiple products, in terms of what they’re flowing,” he said. “Something I’m passionate about and something I want to bring our solutions to is the water infrastructure market and give operators in this world an opportunity to provide a better system – to find those issues, and to conserve, so we’re not wasting a valuable resource.”
For more information:
Josh Holmes, (651) 338-3153, jholmes@pipesense.com
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