Intrinsic Distributed Fiber Optic Leak Detection

Overview

Main Objective

In addition to the protection of oil and gas pipelines, the proposed sensor network could be used to monitor leaks in water pipes for commercial or local civil infrastructure or used to detect leaks in chemical or manufacturing plants where potentially hazardous materials are transferred during normal processing operations.

Public Abstract

Monitoring and inspection of pipelines are essential for optimal operation of the energy infrastructure of the nation. However, methods that are currently used for pipeline inspection and diagnostics are typically either slow, do not provide high spatial resolution, suffer from excessive false-alarms, or are not real-time. Development of a system for the real-time monitoring of pipelines to determine leaks should clearly be a high priority. In the proposed program, Prime Research will adapt newly developed fiber optic sensor technology to provide an inherently reliable method to acoustically detect leaks in pipelines with high spatial precision and low false alarm rates in real time. The proposed leak detection system will rely on newly developed advances in intrinsic interferometric fiber optic sensors that will make it more sensitive, cost effective and reliable than existing sensing non-fiber optic methods or other potential fiber optic sensing technologies.

Summary and Conclusions

Development and manufacturing of IFPI sensors in an optical fiber using a UV laser was successful, with significant improvements in the quality of the sensors fabricated over the course of the program. While the mechanical properties of the IFPI sensors make them poorly suited for acoustic sensors, the experimental results show that they function well as temperature sensors.

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