Pipeline Construction Research Articles

Indicators of soil degradation on a pipeline footprint, Alberta, Canada

Monitoring data are needed to assess the effectiveness of soil conservation measures applied on agricultural lands during pipeline construction. Soil data were collected on the footprint of a pipeline constructed in 2016–2017 in west-central Alberta. Construction practices were expected to mitigate for topsoil loss and admixture, compaction, and erosion. Sites were established on the footprint and on adjacent reference areas on 24 parcels. Field measurements included point-sample results for horizon thickness, bulk density and soil erosion-rate including suspended sediment in runoff, and laboratory measurements from composite samples including pH, total organic carbon and texture. Admixture rate was estimated from change in percentage clay. Topsoil thickness was more variable on the reclaimed footprint than references. Topsoil pH was about 0.4 units higher and percent clay was 6.2% higher on the footprint than references but total organic carbon was not different. Admixture rates in the topsoil at six parcels ranged from 0.18 to 0.60. Penetration resistance on four measured aggregate size classes of subsoil was significantly higher on the footprint than reference. Subsoil loss from rill erosion ranged from 0.1 to 8.1 cm in the first year after construction when little vegetation was present and sediment concentrations in runoff sometimes exceeded 10 g L−1. Mitigations applied to limit soil degradation were less effective than expected. The use of quantitative techniques to monitor soil reclamation outcomes will improve the credibility of results but add costs to the process. Similar monitoring is needed to determine the effectiveness of current reclamation practices.

Textflows: an open science NLP evaluation approach

AbstractWeb-based platforms offer suitable experimental environments enabling the construction and reuse of natural language processing (NLP) pipelines. However, systematic evaluation of NLP tools in an open science web-based setting is still a challenge, as suitable experimental environments for the construction and reuse of NLP pipelines are still rare. This paper presents TextFlows, an open-source web-based platform, which enables user-friendly construction, sharing, execution, and reuse of NLP pipelines. It demonstrates that TextFlows can be easily used for systematic evaluation of new NLP components by integrating seven publicly available open-source part of speech (POS) taggers from popular NLP libraries, and evaluating them on six annotated corpora. The integration of new tools into TextFlows supports tools reuse, while the use of precomposed algorithm comparison and evaluation workflows supports experiment reproducibility and testing of future algorithms in the same experimental environment. Finally, to showcase the variety of evaluation possibilities offered in the TextFlows platform, the influence of various factors, such as the training corpus length and the use of pre-trained models, have been tested.

Temporal Trends in Soil Health and Productivity on Reclaimed Natural Gas Pipeline Rights‐of‐Way on Cropland

ABSTRACTThe construction of underground pipelines negatively impacts soil productivity in various ecosystems. However, the temporal progression in the recovery of soil productivity following the reclamation of cropland impacted by natural gas pipeline rights‐of‐way (ROWs) construction remains unclear. This study examined temporal, post‐reclamation changes in selected soil health indicators and productivity on reclaimed underground natural gas pipeline ROWs on cropland. Soil and crop samples were collected from ROWs ranging in time elapsed since reclamation (TSR) from 6 to 12 years and from adjacent undisturbed locations (off‐ROW) in the same field. The soil samples were analyzed for soil health indicators (permanganate‐oxidizable carbon (POXC), soil respiration, and autoclaved citrate‐extractable (ACE) protein) and selected chemical properties. Crop samples were assessed for grain and total biomass yields as well as grain protein content. Compared to the off‐ROW, soil organic C on the ROWs was 29% (6‐year ROW) and 33% (9‐year ROW) lower than on the off‐ROWs. Soil respiration recovered within 6 years of ROW reclamation, whereas it took 12 years for POXC and ACE protein to recover to off‐ROW levels. Grain and biomass yields 12 years post‐reclamation were still 42% and 36%, respectively, lower on the ROWs than on the off‐ROWs. However, measured soil attributes recovered faster than crop variables, indicating that pipeline construction on cropland has longer‐term impacts on crop yields than on soil attributes. These results indicate that, although underground pipeline construction has detrimental impacts on soil and crop attributes, these attributes would slowly recover to pre‐construction levels with increasing TSR.

Combined acoustic emission and electrochemical methods for analyzing the uniform corrosion behavior of X90 high-grade steel pipelines

Long-distance, large-diameter, and high-pressure pipelines represent the future of oil and gas pipeline construction. X90 pipeline steel is expected to become the standard steel due to its high transmission efficiency and lower cost in the future, yet corrosion poses the most significant challenge to the development of high-strength pipelines. This study focuses on monitoring the uniform corrosion process of X90 steels using acoustic emission (AE) and electrochemical testing systems. The AE signals from corrosion were processed using wavelet de-noising, decomposition, and reconstruction to extract signal characteristics. Experimental results reveal that the corrosion process of X90 steel can be categorized into three stages: initial metal dissolution, corrosion product accumulation, and corrosion stabilization. Signal activity and strength follow normal distributions throughout these stages. During metal dissolution and corrosion stabilization, AE signals exhibit a frequency range of 100–200 kHz with relatively low amplitude. Conversely, during corrosion product accumulation, signals display a narrow frequency range with higher amplitudes, typically around 3 × 10-4V. Moreover, the appearance of a double-peak signal suggests the presence of two distinct AE sources.

Impact of excavation footage on vertical shaft lining deformation and surrounding rock stress in Xiyu conglomerate

The Xiyu conglomerate, which is extensively distributed in Xinjiang, China, presents challenges for vertical shaft construction owing to its poor cementation and low strength. The selection of an appropriate footage length is paramount for ensuring safe construction. Based on the shaft pipeline construction project of the Xinlongkou Hydropower Station on the Kuitun River, this study investigated the impact of footage length on the stability of vertical shafts within the Xiyu conglomerate strata using finite element simulation and measurement data to analyze the lining displacement and change in stress in the surrounding rock. The results show that the excavation footage has little effect on the lining’s horizontal displacement during vertical shaft excavation. A mathematical model was developed to describe how the vertical displacement of the lining varies with the excavation footage and vertical shaft depth. Below a critical threshold, the stress in the surrounding rock cannot be effectively alleviated, leading to a concentration of stress; above that critical threshold, an excessively large excavation increases the load on the surrounding rock. Based on the simulation results and factors such as economic benefits, construction speed, and safety, an excavation footage of 4 m is judged to be appropriate.

Challenges in Underground Utility Tunnel Construction and Strategies for Intelligent Management

With the rapid advancement of urbanization, the importance of municipal infrastructure construction is increasingly highlighted. The municipal underground pipeline project, as a key link, aims to optimize the living environment and improve the quality of life services for the people. Given the continuous growth of urban population and the increasingly scarce land resources, the municipal comprehensive underground pipeline project effectively alleviates the pressure on urban land resources by efficiently utilizing underground space. However, the construction of such projects involves complex construction technologies, and scientific and reasonable intelligent management methods are needed to ensure project quality and construction efficiency. In view of this, the author discusses the challenges faced in municipal underground pipeline construction and the intelligent management strategies through participation in the design and construction of several pipeline projects.

Faster extraction of matrimonial advertisements from digital archives using a signal processing pipeline: a case study on a 20th-Century Spanish newspaper

ABSTRACT With the exponential growth of digitized historical materials, historians and social scientists face the daunting task of navigating vast online collections. While online archives do provide search tools to query their materials, these usually do not meet the scholars’ need to trace and store all relevant materials from the online archive. This case study shows how computer vision methods, and more specifically a signal processing approach, can be used to identify, classify and extract relevant information items from a vast historical data collection. More specifically, this study reports the results of the construction of a data pipeline that extracts matrimonial advertisements from the digitized Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia. Matrimonial advertisements can provide genuine insights into the evolution of partner preferences over time, but they are hard to collect as they are scattered over millions of digitized historical newspapers and magazines. Moreover, to study variation in partner preferences by, for example, sex, social class, matrimonial status and time period, it is necessary to store the data into a database. The pipeline that we have constructed extracts matrimonial advertisements in a stepwise fashion, encompassing identification, through binarisation and segmentation, and classification based on Optical Character Recognition. By ways of a comprehensive evaluation, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the efficacy of the pipeline for the extraction of matrimonial advertisements is demonstrated. The findings not only underscore the viability of the signal processing approach but also underscore its potential for advancing research in historical demography, family history, as well as economic history, as similar pipelines can be set up to extract other relevant newspaper items, such as, marriage, birth, death and moving announcements, job vacancies or business announcements from digitized source collections.

Сравнение методов повышения производительности магистрального нефтепровода в рамках планируемой модернизации

The article raises the problems of the need to build new pipelines and the complexity of their construction. A hypothetical pipeline has been calculated and its version with half of the intermediate stations has been modeled. Calculations have been carried out to increase the throughput of the simulated pipeline due to an anti-turbulent additive and an additional pump at the station. The concept of "planned modernization" has been introduced as part of the implementation of the third method of increasing throughput, which combines the first two. The conclusion is made about the prospects of the methodology described in the article for increasing the productivity of main pipelines, both as part of a temporary solution and when optimizing investments in the construction of new pipelines.

Sewerage and drainage manhole measuring using terrestrial laser scanning techniques

ABSTRACT A common method for measuring sewer and drainage manholes with tape measure lacks precision in cases of sediment accumulation or deep manholes, impacting data accuracy. This paper proposed a method for measuring sewer and drainage manholes using terrestrial laser scanning. This method first utilizes a plane fitting equation and the RANSAC method to determine the ground and segmentation planes, enabling automatic trimming of the point cloud of the manhole. Subsequently, the pipe’s inlet and outlet extraction is done using the point cloud combining Region Growing method. Finally, according to the feature of cylinder pipe and elliptical cylinder pipe, the inlet and outlet are reconstructed using the extracted point cloud. Experimental results show that the radius of pipe’s inlet or outlet can be measured by the proposed method with an accuracy of 5.20 mm, the height difference of the manhole can be measured with an accuracy of 7.05 mm, meeting the requirement of a permissible deviation of 10 mm for measuring the lowest point of manhole specified in the “ Code for construction and acceptance of water and sewerage pipeline works “ (GB50268-2008).

Experimental studies of bearing capacity of pipe steel of sewage systems

The results of experimental studies on the kinetics of crack growth, its relationship with the parameters of crack resistance and long-term strength of pipe steels of different service life and their structural and phase composition are presented. It was found that the value of the critical stress SK for all test steels increases with the increase in the service life, and the impact viscosity decreases, which indicates the structural embrittlement of the pipe steels associated with their sudden flooding. It is shown that the new 06G2BA steel, which is economically modified with a carbide-forming element (vanadium) and has a fine-grained structure and a low content of harmful impurities (sulfur, phosphorus), has the highest visco-plastic properties and resistance to brittle fracture. The microstrain of the α-Fe crystal lattice, as well as the quantitative decay of cementite and the redistribution of carbon between ferrite and pearlite, were evaluated by X-ray structural methods. 06G2BA steel is recommended for use in the construction of pipelines and, for example, bridge structures, which are constantly under cyclic loads with simultaneous contact with a corrosive-aggressive environment. The influence of the service life of water pipes on the hydrogen content and microcracks in pipe steels was determined. A diagram of the relationship between long-term and static strength depending on the hydrogen content in steels is recommended, which can be used by designers to rationally choose the type of steels with high crack resistance in aggressive technological environments. In order to extend the service life of pipe structures, it is necessary to use economically modified steels.

Study on rapid policy-based strategic environmental assessment-taking China's regional development policy of Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone as an example

Strategic Environmental Assessment(SEA) is acknowledged to be an important decision support tool. SEA concerns potential environmental impacts of decisions made by policy, plan and programs. At present, policy-based SEA is still in the exploratory stage in China. The development of policy-based SEA is extremely slow due to institutional and technical difficulties. In practice, the time from policy proposals to policy implementation is relatively short. So the corresponding policy-based SEA should reflect the characteristics of rapidity, centre on the seriously negative impact that may be caused policy implementation, and provide early and initial warnings.A simple and rapid framework was designed for policy-based SEA in this study. The framework includes four parts, namely, policy analysis, eco-environmental impact identification, eco-environmental sensitivity assessment, policy recommendations. Following this framework, regional development policy of Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) was assessed. Results reveal that: 1)seriously negative environment impacts may arise from petroleum refining and chemical industry, oil and gas storage and transportation, iron ore transportation, liquid bulk commodities transportation. 2) Central Daishan area, Shengsi archipelago, Taohua Island, Liuheng island in Zhejiang FTZ is relatively of high eco-sensitivity, thus the fore-mentioned activities should be environmentally friendly or restricted in these areas. 3)In the future, continuous efforts should be made to promote sealing and automation of petroleum refining, chemical industry. Green petrochemical manufacturing technology utilization is recommended to reduce pollution from the source. Further, accelerating the construction of transportation pipelines is suggested in order to reduce air pollutants emissions caused by vehicle transportation activities. Fishery stock enhancement and releasing is recommended to counteract negative impact on fishery caused by iron and liquid bulk commodity marine transportation.

DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS AND METHOD OF AUTONOMOUS POWER AND GAS SUPPLY OF REMOTE CONSUMERS FROM GAS DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS

The development and implementation of independent power supply systems with a high degree of autonomy is becoming an urgent task for the development of remote and inaccessible regions of the country, both due to the lack of energy capacities and accessible networks in newly developed areas, and the high cost of allocating separate power lines for remote and compact settlements. The increase in the scale of central networks is associated with high capital investments and long project implementation time, which creates inconvenience for consumers and the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, unlike power supply, gasification issues, which are actively being resolved in all regions of the country, make it possible to connect new consumers of natural gas several times faster and cheaper, which is due to the high manufacturability and speed of construction of polyethylene gas pipelines of distribution networks, provided that gas pipelines pass in the region. In addition to lower capital and operating costs, the process of transporting energy resources through pipelines in the form of a primary source — gas — is characterized by significantly lower losses compared to water and electricity. At the same time, network gas in combination with trigeneration technologies and cryogenic hydrocarbon storage can be used not only as boiler fuel, but also as motor fuel, a source for generating electricity, heat and even cold with a replenished autonomous reserve. Thus, as an alternative solution to traditional power systems, it is proposed to use hybrid power systems — systems based on trigeneration plants with gas piston installations, turbine and screw machines, as well as cryogenic gas storage facilities that can provide the population with electricity, heat, cold and motor fuel. The article analyzed the state and development of the fuel and energy complex in Russia, conducted a study of the needs for heat, gas and electricity for an average compact settlement with small and medium-sized enterprises. Analysis and selection of equipment parameters for uninterrupted autonomous power supply of the economy was carried out.

SOLID WASTE FROM OIL PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION: IN THE CONTEXT OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

In the contemporary energy industry, oil pipelines are extensively used; presentation of various effect on environment is might be caused in course to their transportation. Pipeline construction, operation and maintenance are majorly generated solid waste. Such waste can range from metal scraps, plastic materials and grounds with opaque plant covers. The wastes produced are, additionally, environmental contaminations which is a detrimental recipe to local ecosystems. Soil and water sources pollution is one of the most serious problems in Azerbaijan. The management strategies through remedial techniques are developed to minimize the environmental impact of waste generation. Management and disposal of solid waste take place at the environmental protection.

Propagation buckling failure of a buried offshore pipeline with integral arrestors under external overpressure and strike-slip faulting disturbance

In this study, the propagation buckling failure of a buried offshore pipeline under external overpressure and strike-slip faulting disturbances was investigated numerically. A nonlinear shell model, accounting for geometric, material, self-contact, and pipe-soil interaction nonlinearities, was developed using the vector form intrinsic element method. The arresting performances of the single- and double-integral arrestors were analyzed based on a series of simulations considering various combinations of arrestor diameter-to-thickness ratios, lengths, and sub-arrestor intervals. A comparative analysis was conducted between single- and double-integral arrestors, focusing on their arresting performance, material usage, and manufacturing complexity. The results revealed that pipelines under external overpressure are prone to local collapse and bidirectional buckling propagation under small fault displacements. Reverse ellipticities occur downstream of the buckling propagation and their development leads to flipping propagation. Buckling arrestors function by exhausting the upstream flattening propagation and inhibiting the development of reverse ellipticities downstream. The material consumption of each single-integral arrestor was significantly higher than that of a double-integral arrestor with the same diameter-to-thickness ratio. The weld count of the double-integral arrestors was lower than that of the single scheme, but this difference narrowed as the pipeline mileage increased. These results can serve as valuable guidelines for the design and construction of pipelines crossing seismic zones.

Strain and stress responses of the springback and rerounding processes of dented pipelines

Denting, a common geometric defect in oil and gas pipelines, can threaten the structural integrity and safety of pipelines. A pipeline dent is usually caused by the collision or extrusion of hard objects during the pipeline construction and service stages. Some rebound occurs in the dented zone when the external load is removed. In actual engineering, unconstrained dents tend to reround with increasing internal pressure of the pipeline. This study experimentally and numerically investigated the processes of springback and rerounding of a dented pipeline. First, full-scale testing was carried out to simulate the springback and rerounding processes, and the strain variations at the dent were measured. Then, a 3-dimensional numerical model was developed and then validated against the experimental results. According to the experimental and numerical results, the stress and strain responses of the pipeline during the springback and rerounding processes were studied in detail. Furthermore, the factors influencing the springback and rerounding coefficients were discussed. Finally, equations for predicting the springback and rerounding coefficients of dented pipelines were proposed on the basis of a nonlinear regression analysis. The results show that mainly elastic recovery occurs during springback. After a dent is unloaded, the elastic strain and von Mises stress of the pipeline decrease greatly, while the plastic strain remains unchanged. The elastic strain increases with increasing internal pressure. The springback and rerounding coefficients increase with increasing indenter diameter and diameter-to-wall thickness, while the loading depth has a negative effect on these coefficients. The proposed formulas can be used as a reference for estimating the ratios of dent springback and rerounding of dented pipelines.

Construction of Utility Tunnel power supply and distribution system

As an underground structure that can accommodate multiple municipal pipelines, the utility tunnel can not only coordinate the planning, construction, and management of various municipal pipelines, but also achieve intensive development of urban underground space. In theory, any municipal pipeline can be included in the utility tunnel, thereby eradicating phenomena such as "road zippers" and "aerial spider webs" in the urban construction process. As a massive underground structure, the utility tunnel has its own electricity demand. Only by constructing a safe and stable power supply and distribution system inside the pipe gallery can it effectively ensure personal safety and the reliability of pipeline operation.

Operational Planning and Design Considerations for Underground Logistics Transportation in Texas

The logistics transportation system is critical to the United States economy. Underground Logistics Transportation (ULT) is a class of automated transportation systems in which vehicles carry freight through pipelines and tunnels between terminals. Being able to use a part of the underground space of existing highways will greatly facilitate the construction of such pipelines and tunnels and reduce their construction costs. Underground Logistics Transportation (ULT) could be the answer to make freight transport more sustainable and competitive. Texas highways and railroads are expected to increase by nearly 207% from 2003 to 2030. Truck tonnage will grow by 251%, while rail tonnage is forecasted to increase 118%. The number of trucks carrying NAFTA goods will increase by 263%, and the number of rail units will grow by 195%. This will have a profound impact on the highway and rail systems. The objective of this paper is to present requirements and operational components for three types of ULT lines: standard shipping containers, a standard crate size, and a standard pallet size. This study examines the use of ULT as a mode of underground transportation with the help of three case studies. This research shows that ULT is financially viable, feasible, greener, cost effective, and can become an important part of intermodal freight mobility.

试析市政工程施工中的地下管线施工技术

The construction technology of underground pipelines in municipal engineering is a crucial component of urban infrastructure development. Its advancement and application directly affect the normal operation of cities and the quality of life of residents. This paper defines and categorizes underground pipeline construction technology, outlines its development history and basic principles, and discusses in detail the preparatory work before construction, including surveying and measurement, design and planning, and the preparation of equipment and materials. In the section on specific applications, the paper deeply analyzes the characteristics and applicable scenarios of construction methods such as the open-cut method, trenchless technology, directional drilling, and pipe jacking.

A mathematical programming approach to export pathway planning of distributed hydrogen production in offshore wind farm

Hydrogen production is a vital development trend to improve the economics and penetration rate of offshore wind farms (OWFs), and distributed hydrogen production (DHP) is a preferred solution for deep and far sea OWFs without expensive submarine cables and offshore substations. The export pathway of OWF-DHP consists of collection pipelines, transmission pipelines, and offshore compressor stations. In this paper, mathematical programming is introduced to explore the export pathway planning problem of OWF-DHP. Firstly, the area of OWF is discretized into multiple grids with the center of the grids being the candidate locations of the offshore compressor station. Then, a binary integer quadratic programming problem is established to optimize both the offshore compressor station location and pipeline construction with different topologies. Further, the mathematical model is solved by the branch and cut algorithm integrated with the proposed dimension reduction methods. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed export pathway planning approach is verified by the actual data of Baltic Eagle OWF in Germany, which would support the construction of the OWF-DHP project.

Naphthenic Acid Corrosion Mitigation: The Role of Niobium in Low-Carbon Steel.

Naphthenic acid corrosion is a well-recognized factor contributing to corrosion in the construction of offshore industry pipelines. To mitigate the corrosive effects, minor quantities of alloying elements are introduced into the steel. This research specifically explores the corrosion effects arising from immersing low-carbon steel, specifically A333 Grade 6, in a naphthenic acid solution. Various weight percentages of niobium were incorporated, and the resulting properties were observed. It was noted that the addition of 2% niobium in low-carbon steel exhibited the least mass loss and a lower corrosion rate after a 12 h immersion in naphthenic acid. Microstructural analysis using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed small white particles, indicating the presence of oil sediment residue, along with corrosion pits. Following the addition of 2% niobium, the occurrence of corrosion pits markedly decreased, and only minor voids were observed. Additionally, the chemical composition analysis using energy-dispersive X-Ray analysis (EDX) showed that the black spot exhibited the highest percentage of carbon, resembling high corrosion attack. Meanwhile, the whitish regions with low carbon content indicated the lowest corrosion attack. The results demonstrated that the addition of 2% niobium yielded optimal properties for justifying corrosion effects. Therefore, low-carbon steel with a 2% niobium addition can be regarded as a superior corrosion-resistant material for offshore platform pipeline applications.