Manchester licenses pipe blockage detection technology

Licence agreement

The Manchester University has licensed acoustic technology for detecting blockages and leaks in gas pipelines to Pipeline Engineering Ltd for commercialisation.

The system, called Acoustek, can quickly and accurately locate problems at distances of up to 10 kilometres. It has been developed by an academic team at Manchester over several years and has recently attracted more than £500,000 of funding from sources including the oil company BP, which will enable the team and its industrial partners to develop the technology into a commercial offering.

BP’s support and investment in the development project has enabled the development team to trial Acoustek on a live gas installation, to build confidence to the technology. In one case Acoustek was used to survey a section of offshore gas pipeline and identified and located a near complete blockage around 500 metres from the host platform.

The initial survey was performed in a matter of hours, and the technique offered several advantages over current radiographic techniques including carrying out a remote survey without the need for a support vessel, and the ability to survey sections of the pipeline buried under rock.

Frank Allison, Venture Manager at UMIP, the university’s technology commercialisation arm, said, “It is so difficult to trial new technologies such as this in a live environment. However, by virtue of BP’s investment in developing the technology we, along with Pipeline Engineering’s field service team, have been able to undertake testing on a working live gas subsea pipeline in the North Sea over a number of months.”

Gordon Short, Director of Technical Development at Pipeline Engineering, said, “Radiographic detection and diver interventions [are very costly]. Add to this the loss of production, and environmental implications should the use of chemicals be involved, then the benefits of early detection using Acoustek. become obvious.”

Over the next two years, the funding will enable the team to further develop and improve the equipment, to extend the range and improve the accuracy of the technique even further. The team would welcome commercial interest from other oil and gas companies who require assessments of their gas networks.