Research On Leak Monitoring Technology For Product Oil Pipeline

As an important tool for the long-distance transportation of product oil, pipeline construction has being developed rapidly in recent years in the world. In the long-term running, leak will occur occasionally and seriously endanger the operation safety of the pipeline system, which may be caused by internal & external factors including pipe aging, mechanical damage, chemical corrosion, and natural disaster, etc. In order to timely find out and accurately locate the leakage, and reduce the economic loss and the accident risk, it is necessary to research into leak monitoring techniques and apply them in field. Compared with crude oil pipeline, due to multi-batch transportation, multi-distribution operation and frequent regulation, leak monitoring for product oil pipeline is much more difficult. Once leak occurs, the oil loss at the leakage point induces an oil pressure drop, causing negative pressure wave as well as acoustic wave. Through analyzing negative pressure wave signals and acoustic wave signals acquired by sensors, it can find out and locate the leakage. For interference signals like background noises in the product oil pipeline, wavelet packet decomposition technology is used to denoise the acquired negative pressure wave signals and acoustic wave signals, and extract the feature signals. Meanwhile, the signal velocity in product oil is calculated dynamically to improve the location accuracy. Field Tests indicate that the technology combining negative pressure wave and acoustic wave is accurate and reliable, and has good performance.