The Benefits of Accurate ILI Performance on Pipeline Integrity Programs for Axial Crack and Metal Loss Corrosion Threats

Author(s):  
Riski H. Adianto ◽  
Jason B. Skow ◽  
Jeffrey Sutherland

An analysis describing the benefits of an accurate in-line inspection (ILI) system performance is presented in this paper. A good ILI performance is characterized as an accurate description of the condition of an inspected pipeline. Information from a better ILI performance, as compared to a poorer one, can be used to reduce the number of required digs and/or extend the re-inspection interval without compromising the pipeline’s integrity. As a result, these parameters can be used to assess the benefits of the improved inspection performance. For this analysis, the ILI performance was represented by the depth sizing accuracy as the depth of a feature is one of the most critical parameters in assessing the pressure containment capacity at the feature location. This work utilized a sensitivity analysis in which the impact of various levels of ILI performance on a pipeline integrity program in terms of the number of required repairs for a given reliability threshold was examined. The number of required repairs associated with each inspection performance was calculated using a reliability based assessment method. This method was selected because it fully accounts for the statistical characteristic of the ILI performance. The sensitivity analysis considered two pipeline condition scenarios for two pipeline systems. The first pipeline condition scenario was characterized as having a high number of features, many of which were severe in size, while the second condition scenario consisted of fewer features that were less significant in size. The analysis was carried out for both axial stress corrosion cracking and metal loss corrosion features. The results of the analysis show that a more accurate ILI depth measurement leads to a more accurate pipeline reliability estimate, and therefore, a reduction in the number of required repairs. However, the benefit associated with continued ILI measurement accuracy improvement exhibits a diminishing trend.

Author(s):  
Dongliang Lu ◽  
Jennifer Klementis ◽  
Shahani Kariyawasam ◽  
Terry Huang ◽  
Ryan Sager

Abstract High resolution magnetic flux leakage (MFL) in-line inspection (ILI) technology has proven to be one of the most effective approaches to manage corrosion anomalies within the pipeline industry. However, due to the presence of extra metal, pipeline casings are suspected of impacting the detection and sizing accuracy of MFL systems for metal loss features when they are located under casings. A research project was carried out by TC Energy (TCE) with ROSEN to better understand the effect of pipeline casings on the performance of axially-aligned MFL ILI (MFL-A) technology. The study involved full-scale pull through testing to investigate the effects of various casing conditions and the presence of different types of casing spacers on the inspection system’s sizing and detection performance for corrosion anomalies, including the casing eccentricity, the presence of metallic and electrolytic shorting, and the presence of different types of casing spacers. The testing for various eccentricity and shorting scenarios were compared to an uncased baseline scenario. An important lesson learned by the project team through this research is the importance of identifying key factors that influence the system performance when analyzing the testing results. Failure in doing so can lead to less meaningful results: in this case, an overly conservative estimate of the sizing performance that does not discriminate appropriately where the system performed well and where the system performed worse than expected. The impact of such a broad-brushing and overly conservative estimate in the MFL system performance to pipeline integrity decisions is very significant and can result in a large number of unnecessary repairs in practice. With comprehensive data analytics, it was identified that the key factors affecting the tool performance for cased pipes are the small annulus gaps between the casing and the carrier pipe at the feature location, and the presence of certain types of spacers. For the vast majority of cases, the ILI performance under casings is comparable to the performance for uncased pipes. The results from this research suggests that with appropriate consideration of the system performance, TCE’s probabilistic ILI based corrosion management program can effectively manage corrosion anomalies within cased pipes using ILI. Additional research and testing are underway to further support this conclusion.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengyuan Wang ◽  
Mikhail Traskin ◽  
Dylan S. Small

AbstractThe before-and-after study with multiple unaffected control groups is widely applied to study treatment effects. The current methods usually assume that the control groups’ differences between the before and after periods, i.e. the group time effects, follow a normal distribution. However, there is usually no strong a priori evidence for the normality assumption, and there are not enough control groups to check the assumption. We propose to use a flexible skew-t distribution family to model group time effects, and consider a range of plausible skew-t distributions. Based on the skew-t distribution assumption, we propose a robust-t method to guarantee nominal significance level under a wide range of skew-t distributions, and hence make the inference robust to misspecification of the distribution of group time effects. We also propose a two-stage approach, which has lower power compared to the robust-t method, but provides an opportunity to conduct sensitivity analysis. Hence, the overall method of analysis is to use the robust-t method to test for the overall hypothesized range of shapes of group variation; if the test fails to reject, use the two-stage method to conduct a sensitivity analysis to see if there is a subset of group variation parameters for which we can be confident that there is a treatment effect. We apply the proposed methods to two datasets. One dataset is from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to study the impact of the Mariel Boatlift on Miami unemployment rates between 1979 and 1982.The other dataset contains the student enrollment and grade repeating data in West Germany in the 1960s with which we study the impact of the short school year in 1966–1967 on grade repeating rates.


Proceedings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Jeremy Arancio ◽  
Ahmed Ould El Moctar ◽  
Minh Nguyen Tuan ◽  
Faradj Tayat ◽  
Jean-Philippe Roques

In the race for energy production, supplier companies are concerned by the thermal rating of offshore cables installed in a J-tube, not covered by IEC 60287 standards, and are now looking for solutions to optimize this type of system. This paper presents a numerical model capable of calculating temperature fields of a power transmission cable installed in a J-tube, based on the lumped element method. This model is validated against the existing literature. A sensitivity analysis performed using Sobol indices is then presented in order to understand the impact of the different parameters involved in the heating of the cable. This analysis provides an understanding of the thermal phenomena in the J-tube and paves the way for potential technical and economic solutions to increase the ampacity of offshore cables installed in a J-tube.


Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Iris Gerken ◽  
Thomas Wetzel ◽  
Jürgen J. Brandner

Micro heat exchangers have been revealed to be efficient devices for improved heat transfer due to short heat transfer distances and increased surface-to-volume ratios. Further augmentation of the heat transfer behaviour within microstructured devices can be achieved with heat transfer enhancement techniques, and more precisely for this study, with passive enhancement techniques. Pin fin geometries influence the flow path and, therefore, were chosen as the option for further improvement of the heat transfer performance. The augmentation of heat transfer with micro heat exchangers was performed with the consideration of an improved heat transfer behaviour, and with additional pressure losses due to the change of flow path (pin fin geometries). To capture the impact of the heat transfer, as well as the impact of additional pressure losses, an assessment method should be considered. The overall exergy loss method can be applied to micro heat exchangers, and serves as a simple assessment for characterization. Experimental investigations with micro heat exchanger structures were performed to evaluate the assessment method and its importance. The heat transfer enhancement was experimentally investigated with microstructured pin fin geometries to understand the impact on pressure loss behaviour with air.


Encyclopedia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 472-481
Author(s):  
Nasim Aghili ◽  
Mehdi Amirkhani

Green buildings refer to buildings that decrease adverse environmental effects and maintain natural resources. They can diminish energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, the usage of non-renewable materials, water consumption, and waste generation while improving occupants’ health and well-being. As such, several rating tools and benchmarks have been developed worldwide to assess green building performance (GBP), including the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) in the United Kingdom, German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in the United States and Canada, Comprehensive Assessment System for Built Environment Efficiency (CASBEE) in Japan, Green Star in Australia, Green Mark in Singapore, and Green Building Index in Malaysia. Energy management (EM) during building operation could also improve GBP. One of the best approaches to evaluating the impact of EM on GBP is by using structural equation modelling (SEM). SEM is a commanding statistical method to model testing. One of the most used SEM variance-based approaches is partial least squares (PLS), which can be implemented in the SmartPLS application. PLS-SEM uses path coefficients to determine the strength and significance of the hypothesised relationships between the latent constructs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5608
Author(s):  
Manjiang Shi ◽  
Qi Cao ◽  
Baisong Ran ◽  
Lanyan Wei

Global disasters due to earthquakes have become more frequent and intense. Consequently, post-disaster recovery and reconstruction has become the new normal in the social process. Through post-disaster reconstruction, risks can be effectively reduced, resilience can be improved, and long-term stability can be achieved. However, there is a gap between the impact of post-earthquake reconstruction and the needs of the people in the disaster area. Based on the international consensus of “building back better” (BBB) and a post-disaster needs assessment method, this paper proposes a new (N-BBB) conceptual model to empirically analyze recovery after the Changning Ms 6.0 earthquake in Sichuan Province, China. The reliability of the model was verified through factor analysis. The main observations were as follows. People’s needs focus on short-term life and production recovery during post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction. Because of disparities in families, occupations, and communities, differences are observed in the reconstruction time sequence and communities. Through principal component analysis, we found that the N-BBB model constructed in this study could provide strong policy guidance in post-disaster recovery and reconstruction after the Changning Ms 6.0 earthquake, effectively coordinate the “top-down” and “bottom-up” models, and meet the diversified needs of such recovery and reconstruction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tinevimbo Shiri ◽  
Angela Loyse ◽  
Lawrence Mwenge ◽  
Tao Chen ◽  
Shabir Lakhi ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Mortality from cryptococcal meningitis remains very high in Africa. In the Advancing Cryptococcal Meningitis Treatment for Africa (ACTA) trial, 2 weeks of fluconazole (FLU) plus flucytosine (5FC) was as effective and less costly than 2 weeks of amphotericin-based regimens. However, many African settings treat with FLU monotherapy, and the cost-effectiveness of adding 5FC to FLU is uncertain. Methods The effectiveness and costs of FLU+5FC were taken from ACTA, which included a costing analysis at the Zambian site. The effectiveness of FLU was derived from cohorts of consecutively enrolled patients, managed in respects other than drug therapy, as were participants in ACTA. FLU costs were derived from costs of FLU+5FC in ACTA, by subtracting 5FC drug and monitoring costs. The cost-effectiveness of FLU+5FC vs FLU alone was measured as the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). A probabilistic sensitivity analysis assessed uncertainties and a bivariate deterministic sensitivity analysis examined the impact of varying mortality and 5FC drug costs on the ICER. Results The mean costs per patient were US $847 (95% confidence interval [CI] $776–927) for FLU+5FC, and US $628 (95% CI $557–709) for FLU. The 10-week mortality rate was 35.1% (95% CI 28.9–41.7%) with FLU+5FC and 53.8% (95% CI 43.1–64.1%) with FLU. At the current 5FC price of US $1.30 per 500 mg tablet, the ICER of 5FC+FLU versus FLU alone was US $65 (95% CI $28–208) per life-year saved. Reducing the 5FC cost to between US $0.80 and US $0.40 per 500 mg resulted in an ICER between US $44 and US $28 per life-year saved. Conclusions The addition of 5FC to FLU is cost-effective for cryptococcal meningitis treatment in Africa and, if made available widely, could substantially reduce mortality rates among human immunodeficiency virus–infected persons in Africa.


Kybernetes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (11) ◽  
pp. 2713-2735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaomin Fan ◽  
Yingzhi Xu ◽  
Yongqing Nan ◽  
Baoli Li ◽  
Haiya Cai

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of high-speed railway (HSR) on industrial pollution emissions using the data for 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2016. Design/methodology/approach The research method used in this paper is the multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model, which is an effective policy effect assessment method. To further address the issue of endogeneity, the DID integrated with the propensity score matching (PSM-DID) approach is employed to eliminate the potential self-selection bias. Findings The results show that the HSR has significantly reduced industrial pollution emissions, which is validated by several robustness tests. Compared with peripheral cities, HSR exerts a greater impact on industrial pollution emissions in central cities. In addition, the mechanism test reveals that the optimised allocation of inter-city industries is an important channel for HSR to mitigate industrial pollution emissions, and this is closely related to the location of HSR stations. Originality/value Previous studies have paid more attention to evaluating the economic effects of HSR, however, most of these studies overlook its environmental effects. Consequently, the impact of HSR on industrial pollution emissions is led by using multi-period DID models in this paper, in which the environmental effects are measured. The results of this paper can provide a reference for the pollution reduction policies and also the coordinated development of economic growth and environmental quality.


2015 ◽  
Vol 671 ◽  
pp. 412-418
Author(s):  
Lu Lu Xu ◽  
Li Zhu Chen ◽  
Hugh Gong ◽  
Xue Mei Ding

Water footprint is a volumetric indicator of freshwater appropriation. The grey water footprint (GWF) provides a tool to assess the water volume needed to assimilate a pollutant. However, evaluating the impact on water environment cannot rely solely on volumetric consumption of freshwater. It demands accurate assessment criteria to reflect its environmental and ecological effects on ambient water resource. In this paper, a new assessment method is proposed: the effluent toxicity and the Potential Eco-toxic Effects Probe (PEEP) index of aquatic environment are taken into consideration. This method provides a comprehensive indicator for evaluating water footprint, specified in effluents’ ecological impact on ambient water sources.


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