We recently published a whitepaper on using a system of autonomous intelligent drone swarms as a rapid response system for pipeline leak detection. You can check out our whitepaper here.
We are bringing you a brief summary of our whitepaper here just to get a sense of the key benefits from using autonomous drone swarms to tackle this difficult problem in the oil and gas industry.
Summary
The main causes of pipeline leaks include:
- Material deterioration, e.g., corrosion caused by weathering, exposure to the environment, humidity, temperature variations, and air, that lead to weakened components and increase the risk of a leak.
- Equipment failures, mechanical or electrical in nature, that cause the pipeline to operate outside of nominal conditions.
- Accidental damage from construction projects, human error, as well as natural disasters that can cause difficult to detect structural defects in the pipeline.
- Attacks from malicious groups, cyber-attacks as well as ground attacks with critical damage causing shutdowns.
Traditional approaches to pipeline leak detection include combinations of static sensors such as pressure, fiber-optic, temperature etc., with SCADA systems for remote monitoring and alerting. Major challenges with existing methods of pipeline leak detection include the reliability of the detection, and precise causal and location assessment.
An autonomous swarm of intelligent drones equipped with a multitude of sensors, such as optical and thermal cameras, and chemical sensors, can automatically be dispatched to the field in seconds, perform the leak detection task in a minimal amount of time, with high precision and reliability.
A drone swarm solution for pipeline leak detection offers numerous business benefits to pipeline operators. Improved safety record, lower cost of operations, fewer unnecessary shutdowns are some of the key benefits of this approach.
To get more details, you can check out our whitepaper Autonomous Drone Swarms for Pipeline Leak Detection.