Airborne differential absorption Lidar - a fast, efficient, and sensitive method of natural gas pipeline monitoring

by Rulon Simmons ITT Corporation, Space Systems Division, Rochester, NY, USA

The Evaluation and Rehabilitation of Pipelines Conference

Marriott Hotel Pittsburgh, PA, USA October 21-22, 2009

Organized by

Clarion Technical Conferences

and

Scientific Surveys Ltd and supported by The Professional Institute of Pipeline Engineers

Proceedings of the 2009 Evaluation and Rehabilitation of Pipelines Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Copyright 2009 by Clarion Technical Conferences, Scientific Surveys Ltd and the author(s). All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the copyright owners.

Evaluation and rehabilitation of pipelines conference, October, 2009

A rapid method of inspecting uprated pipelines using differential absorption Lidar

N 2004, ITTs Airborne Natural Gas Emission Lidar (ANGEL) Services introduced a revolutionary method of inspecting pipelines for natural gas leaks, i.e., Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) flown on an airplane. This very sensitive, highly-accurate method facilitates inspections of up to 120 miles of pipeline per hour. As natural gas pipeline operators seek ways to increase product volume and profits, some are choosing to uprate their lines to higher pressure. But to do so, each pipe segment must be inspected at the higher pressure to insure safety and integrity before the line can be put back into operation. Traditional methods of inspection cause considerable delay and therefore loss of potential revenue. With its one-of-a-kind system, ANGEL Services can now reduce the days of delay by orders of magnitude. In typical ANGEL Services pipeline surveys, data is shipped overnight to the Ground Data Processing Facility in Rochester, NY, where it is generally evaluated the next day. When companies uprate pipelines, they often desire results even more quickly. To accommodate, ANGEL Services has demonstrated that it can deploy analysts to a survey site and deliver results within hours. Resources for evaluating uprated and/or rehabilitated pipelines have never been better.

N 2008, the Department of Transportations Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (DOT-PHMSA) proposed rule changes that would allow gas transmission pipeline operators to obtain approval to use increased maximum allowable operating pressures (MAOP) on a broader range of lines that meet updated acceptable design parameters. While the new rules may enable pipeline companies to uprate more of their existing pipelines, it is still incumbent upon pipeline companies to carefully follow guidelines to ensure pipeline integrity and public safety. Failure to properly inspect a pipeline during an uprating in 2001 resulted in an explosion that leveled a Santa Fe, NM building and injured two people. In this incident, a combination of pre-existing pipe corrosion and increased pressure from the uprating created a pinhole sized leak that led to the explosion. Admittedly, back in 2001 it was difficult to survey the pipelines for leaks, before, during, and after an uprating. Fortunately, with a new laser remote sensing technique exemplified by ITTs ANGEL Services Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) system, there are no longer any excuses for not adequately surveying uprated pipelines.

Why uprate a pipeline?

A pipeline companys revenue is directly tied to the volume of product delivered. To transport more natural gas, a pipeline company must either lay more pipe or increase the flow within its existing pipes. Whenever practical, increasing the flow of product through existing pipes is more cost effective. The flow is increased by raising the pressure within the pipe. The maximum allowable operating pressure for pipelines in different geographic areas will vary based upon a classification of proximate population density. Changes in class designations sometimes result in new opportunities for uprating.

Evaluation and rehabilitation of pipelines conference, October, 2009

Uprating rules and regulations

Safety is a prime concern for pipeline companies. To help pipeline companies operate safely, the DOT-PHMSA establishes guidelines and regulations. PHMSA regulations governing pipeline uprating are given in the 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 192. Table 1 summarizes the maximum operating pressure as a percent of the specified minimum yield strength (SMYS) of the steel pipe as a function of population classification.
Class Class 2 (less populated area) Class 3 Class 4 Max operating pressure as % of SMYS 80% 67% 56%

Table 1: PHMSA maximum allowable operating pressures (MAOP). [49 CFR 192.611] In 2008, PHMSA took a step toward reducing restrictions on the uprating of gas transmission pipelines. Under new guidelines, where applicable pipeline operators will be able to incorporate higher design factors into their calculations of maximum allowable operating pressures (MAOP). This alternative MAOP calculation was expected to immediately qualify an additional 3,500 miles of existing pipelines for uprating. Additional miles of pipeline already qualify for uprating. General requirements for uprating a pipeline include: (1) a review of the pipelines operational record; (2) a comprehensive infrastructure survey; (3) controlled pressure increases; (4) pipeline inspection for leaks after incremental pressure increases; (5) repair of any leaks found; and (6) adherence to limitation of pressure as specified by PHMSAs MAOP regulation. Pressure increments are calculated based on one of two criteria, i.e., (1) 10% of the pressure before uprating, and (2) 25% of the total pressurewhichever produces the fewer increments is used. A traditional obstacle to uprating is verification of the pipes integrity through each of the incremental pressure-raising steps. Raising pressure in increments must be accompanied by testing to verify that the increased pressure has not caused any leakage. Traditional methods of walking a line with a Flame Ionization Device (FID) sniffer are slow and often unreliable (e.g., if the wind is blowing the wrong way). Fortunately, there is now a better way.

Differential absorption Lidar: a fast, efficient way to verify pipeline integrity after uprating
In the past five years, ITT Corporation has developed an effective airborne DIAL system for detection of natural gas pipeline leaks. This technology is hosted on a fixed-wing Cessna Grand Caravan, forming the foundation of ITTs commercialized Airborne Natural Gas Emission Lidar (ANGEL) Services (see Figure 1).

Evaluation and rehabilitation of pipelines conference, October, 2009

Figure 1: Cessna Grand Caravan conducting a leak survey at 125 mph. (Image Credit: ITT) Flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet and at a speed of 120 miles per hour, the ANGEL Services lidar system (shown in Figure 2) can survey long stretches of pipeline much faster than any other available method. The technological heart of ANGEL Services is a set of lasers tuned to detect a methane absorption feature at a specific narrow wavelength in the mid-wave infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. With DIAL, a minimum of two lasers are required--one laser with a wavelength tuned to an on-line absorption feature and another laser tuned to a nearby adjacent off-line wavelength where there is no absorption by the gas of interest. The ratio of the reflected returns of the on-line and off-line lasers indicates the amount of gas present (in our case, methane).

Evaluation and rehabilitation of pipelines conference, October, 2009

Figure 2: ANGEL Services Differential Absorption Lidar. (Image Credit: ITT) The ANGEL Services DIAL sensor illuminates a 100-foot swath (from an altitude of 1,000 ft.) with lasers firing at a rate of 3,000 pulses per second. The high repetition pulse rate provides many samples of a plume, revealing detail of its structure. The methane online laser emits energy at a wavelength that is absorbed when it passes through methane. The returned online energy is compared with off-line energy at a wavelength where no methane or other gas absorptions occur. The amount of methane gas between the aircraft and the ground is calculated by comparing the on-line and the off-line return energies, combined with information on the distance between the aircraft and the ground. The absorption is converted to concentration path length (CPL) in units of parts per million-meters (ppm-m).

DIAL detection of leaks is sensitive and accurate

Because the specific wavelength to which the on-line laser is tuned corresponds to an absorption line that is unique to methane, the potential for false alarms is greatly reduced. Analytical procedures eliminate other potential sources of false positives. The sensitivity of the ANGEL Services sensor is now such that it reliably detects all leaks above 4 SCFM and often detects smaller leaks. To put this in perspective, the flow rate from a pinhole-sized leak in a pipe pressurized to 500 psi is 57 SCFM, over 13x the detection limit of ANGEL Services sensor. To demonstrate the sensitivity of ANGEL Services sensor, in late 2008 ITT collaborated with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in a test conducted in California. In this demonstration, PG&E set out 32 staged gas releases of various sizes (from 1.7 to 12 SCFM) along a 440-mile pipeline corridor. ANGEL Services then flew the designated route, finding releases as shown in Table 2. With a system whose sensitivity is down to the background level of methane, ANGEL Services verified that it could find all releases of 4 SCFM or greater with no false

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positives. Even the majority of releases at 2.5 SCFM were found. In the process of this demonstration, 10 real, unstaged pipeline leaks were found, including one Category 1 leak right on a company facility.

Table 2: ANGEL Services performance in finding the staged gas releases set out by PG&E. All releases of 4 SCFM or greater were detected.

Airborne DIAL provides faster testing for uprating pipelines Transwestern Pipeline Company case study
The old-fashioned method of walking the lines with an FID sniffer in search of leaks is a very slow process, particularly when it must be done multiple times as part of an uprating process. In the meantime, companies forgo base and additional revenue for every day they have to wait for pipeline testing. Traditional aerial visual surveys that look for stressed or dead vegetation as leak indicators are impractical since they require a significant time lapse before vegetation becomes visually stressed or dies around a leak. Furthermore, such visual surveys are less reliable, requiring vegetation near a leak (exceedingly rare in cleared right-of-way), a leak of sufficient size to kill the vegetation, and the sufficient passage of time required for the vegetation to die. Fortunately, now there is a better wayairborne leak surveys with DIAL. Data is collected from an airplane-based system flying at over 100 mph. This speed makes it very practical and efficient to perform a baseline survey followed by additional surveys as the pipeline pressure is incrementally raised. As an example, ANGEL Services performed an uprating leak survey for Transwestern Pipeline Company, a Texas-based pipeline company that transports gas from the San Juan, Anadarko and Permian Basins to markets in the Midwest, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and California via approximately 2500 miles of pipe. The uprating survey was conducted as follows. First, ANGEL Services flew a baseline survey that included 37 miles of pipeline to be uprated plus an additional 50 miles of nearby pipeline. The initial survey included both

Evaluation and rehabilitation of pipelines conference, October, 2009

orthomosaiced photoimagery and DIAL data. customer within 24 hours.

Summarized results were provided to the

When the customer was ready to proceed with the uprating a couple of days later, ANGEL Services returned from another pipeline survey job to complete the uprating survey. The pressure was incrementally raised on two subsequent days. On the first day of uprated pressure, ANGEL Services flew the pipeline in the morning and by mid-afternoon had a leak indications report in the hands of the customer. This was repeated on the second day with the pipeline at final pressure. At each stage of the survey, the pipeline was found to be leak-free, with ANGEL Services detecting only a couple of minor valve leaks, which were repaired immediately. Robert Newman, Transwesterns representative responsible for coordinating the leak survey with ANGEL Services, said of the experience: with ANGEL Services the surveys were completed much faster and the process was more efficient. He explained that without ANGEL Services, it would have taken a least 10 people walking each pipeline three times each to complete the required surveys for the uprating. With standard pipeline leak survey projects, the field-collected data is shipped overnight to the Ground Data Processing Facility in Rochester, NY, where it is generally evaluated the next day. But during an uprating exercise even faster service is often desired. In the case of the Transwestern survey, ANGEL Services sent an analyst to the field location to provide onsite rapid analysis of the data within hours. ANGEL Services is now pushing toward pre-processing of the data on-board the aircraft. When implemented, the data would be reduced to a manageable size for transmitting electronically to an analyst back in Rochester as soon as the aircraft lands. This will accomplish the same reduction in the analysis time as is now accomplished by sending an analyst to the customer site.

Conclusions
1. Pipeline uprating is a cost-effective way of increasing delivered product volume. 2. Safety is of prime importance in operating a gas pipeline, particularly as it applies to increasing pressure in a pipe. 3. Required leak testing of pipelines during the uprating procedure is now much more practical and efficient than it has been previously. 4. ANGEL Services is ideally suited for rapid testing of pipelines being uprated.