Remote and Intelligent Diagnostic Methods on Leakage Fault for Crude Oil Pipelines

Abstract

Oil and gas transportation pipelines are the key equipment in petroleum and chemical industry. At present, with the increase of transportation task in oil fields, real-time leak detection system becomes a demand that petroleum companies need to safeguard routines. At the heart of the leakage monitoring and detection procedures are the report of leakage event timely and of leakage point precisely. This paper presents a more realistic approach for using rarefaction-pressure wave technique in oil pipelines, which aims to two targets, one is the improvement of remote and intelligent degree, and the other is the improvement of the leakage location ability. This paper introduces a new scheme to meet the requirements of real time and high data transferring necessary for remote monitoring and leak detection methods for pipelines. The scheme is based on SCADA framework for remote pipeline leakage diagnosis, in which the Dynamic Data Exchange technology is utilized to construct the data-acquiring component to acquire the real-time information that could perform remote test and analysis. It also introduces a basic concept and structure of the remote leak detection system. Primarily, an embedded leak-detection package is designed to exchange the diagnostic information with the RTU data package of Modbus protocol, and then via fiber network, the SCADA-based remote monitoring and leak detection system is realized. Existing data acquisition apparatus applied in oil fields and city underground water pipeline is used, without changing the structure of pipeline supervisory system. This paper introduces the method of constructing DDE-based hot links between servers and client terminals, using Borland C++ Builder 6.0 development environment, and also explains the universality and friendliness of the method. It can easily access similar Windows’ applications simply by modifying Service names, Topic options and data Items. System feasibility was tested using negative-pressure data from oil-fields. Additionally, the applied results show that the whole running status of pipeline can be monitored effectively, and a higher automation grade and an excellent leak location precision of the system can be obtained.