PR-328-153721-R01 Development of an Industry Test Facility and Qualification Process for ILI Technology

The project “Development of an Industry Test Facility and Qualification Processes for in-line inspection (ILI) technology Evaluation and Enhancements” aims to expand knowledge of ILI technology performance and identify gaps where new technology is needed. Additionally, this project aims to provide a continuing resource for ILI technology developers, researchers and pipeline operators to have access to test samples with a range of pipeline integrity threats and vintages and in-line technology test facilities at the Pipeline Research Council International, Inc. (PRCI) Technology Development and Deployment Center (TDC), a PRCI managed facility available for future industry and PHMSA research projects. An ILI pull test facility was designed and constructed as part of this project based on industry state of the art and opportunities for capability improvement. The major ILI technology provid-ers, together with pipeline operator team members, reviewed the TDC sample inventory and de-signed a series of ILI performance tests illustrating one of multiple possible research objectives, culminating in 16 inch and 24 inch nominal diameter test strings. The ILI technology providers proposed appropriate inspection tools based on limited knowledge of the integrity conditions in the test strings, a series of pull tests of the provided ILI tools were performed and the technology providers delivered reports of integrity anomaly location and physical dimensions for perfor-mance evaluation. PRCI engaged Blade Energy Partners, Ltd. (Blade) to conduct the evaluation of the ILI data obtained from repeated testing on the 16 and 24 inch pipeline strings at the TDC. Blade Energy was also requested by the PRCI Project Team to incorporate prior work concerning the development of the PRCI ILI test facility to serve as a final report for the PRCI project. The resulting data was analyzed, aligned, compared to truth data and evaluated by Blade, with the findings presented in this report. Quantitative measures of detection and sizing performance were disclosed in-confidence to the individual ILI technology providers. For instances where ILI predictions were outside of claimed performance, the vendors were given a limited sample of actual defect data to enable re-analysis, thus demonstrating the potential for improved integrity assessment with validation measurements.

This report has a related webinar.