Abstract:

Polymer (Urethane and Rubber) lined pipe spools are deployed in mining, slurry and tailings transport trains, where the erosion of carbon steel (CS) pipe spools is excessive. Maintenance solutions specifically engineered for polymer lined pipe spools can be substantially improved with predictive and prescriptive maintenance management solutions to measure the remaining polymer lining thickness with sensors mounted within the polymer layer itself, contained within the carbon steel shell.

PIP360 Inc. with Spence Corrosion Services Ltd. has researched a variety of ultrasonic sensor, polymer materials and technologies that can be safely deployed in the polymer lined pipe assets to suitability provide remaining thickness and wear rate measurements based on the operating parameters, payload, and environment.

Circumferential arrays of sensors have been installed inside the steel pipe shell within the first base polymer lining layer of approximately 6 to 8mm. Discussions will review the requirements and use of the thickness measurements and wear profile data to provide accurate end of life “EOL” spool management solutions either by rotation of lined assets or by flipping end to end. This allows for reduced maintenance cycles, increased asset life, increased worker and public safety from unforeseen outages or failures and a reduction in CO2 emissions.

With a combination of advanced technologies in UT sensors, polymer materials, signal processing, hardware and firmware, the technology can provide useful signals to determine remaining thickness and wear rates of polymer liner material, as it wears due to slurry transport erosion while the process is running, providing real time predictive maintenance management solutions to optimize the lifetime cost of the slurry transport infrastructure.

The Technical objective of this presentation will demonstrate that monitored assets can achieve a resolution and repeatability of approximately 1mm from an initial polymer thickness of up to 60 mm to a minimum thickness of 6mm. Additionally, it will show that wear rates with a resolution of 0.5mm/1000hrs have been derived from processing daily signals over a period of 500 running hours.

PIP360 shall review the steps required to navigate the regulations (I.e., ABSA) around penetrating pressure rated shells deployed in the Oil Sands, and Hard Rock Mining. We will review considerations around multiplexors, signal generation, processing hardware and firmware, as well as wireless signal reporting to support receiving signal data from field sites.

A brief overview on the functionality, practicality, and cost-effective of these solutions to enable predictive maintenance management prescriptions with low-cost manufacturing for high volume with up to twenty-four sensors per Thickness Measurement Location (TML) will be discussed:

PIP360 will focus on the trials utilizing UT sensors within Polymer lined pipe conducted in the Alberta Oil Sands including:

Sensor technologies and implementation to provide reliable repeatable signals relating to the polymer wall thickness.
Signal processing hardware, firmware, digital methods, and thickness detection algorithms analysis required to achieve thickness resolution and wear rate calculations for EOL.
Hardware design suitable for the application environment with respect to process temperature, operating temperatures, physical and hazardous location parameters.

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