Research on the leakage monitoring of oil pipeline using BOTDR

CATEGORY: PIPELINE LEAKAGE MONITORING
Research on the leakage monitoring of oil pipeline using BOTDR

Type	Conference Paper
Author	F. Wang
Author	Zhenqing Sun
URL	http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7735790/
Pages	4907-4910
Date	August 2016
Conference Name	2016 Progress in Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS)
Abstract	It is important to detect the leakage of oil pipeline in a timely manner to reduce the losses and ensure the smooth operation of oil pipeline. However, monitoring leakage is difficult due to the fact that, typically, the pipeline is long and is often buried underground or underwater. Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry (BOTDR), which can measure the temperature of fiber in a distributed manner, has good potential in monitoring the leakage of oil pipeline. Researchers studied the feasibility of monitoring the leakage of oil pipeline by using BOTDR with both laboratory experiments and field tests. Authors explain the principle of the BOTDR. They report laboratory experiments conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of BOTDR in the leakage monitoring. Several sensing cables with different structures were evaluated by comparing their effectiveness in the leakage monitoring. Four kinds of laying styles of the sensing cables were compared as well. Field tests were conducted by simulating the leakage of oil pipeline. The monitoring effects for different leakage amounts were tested with BOTDR. The sensing cable suitable to monitor the leakage of oil pipeline was selected by considering both the effect of leakage monitoring and the economics. A few laying styles were compared by testing the sensitivity of detecting the leakage of pipeline. Test results revealed that the laying style of straight line along the pipeline can detect the leakage of 1.1m3/h.