Assessment of the Performance of Acoustic and Mass Balance Methods for Leak Detection in Pipelines for Transporting Liquids

Abstract

On-line leak detection is a main concern for the safe operation of pipelines. Acoustic and mass balance are the most important and extensively applied technologies in field problems. The objective of this work is to compare these leak detection methods with respect to a given reference situation, i.e., the same pipeline and monitoring signals acquired at the inlet and outlet ends. Experimental tests were conducted in a 749 m long laboratory pipeline transporting water as the working fluid. The instrumentation included pressure transducers and electromagnetic flowmeters. Leaks were simulated by opening solenoid valves placed at known positions and previously calibrated to produce known average leak flow rates. Results have clearly shown the limitations and advantages of each method. It is also quite clear that acoustics and mass balance technologies are, in fact, complementary. In general, an acoustic leak detection system sends out an alarm more rapidly and locates the leak more precisely, provided that the rupture of the pipeline occurs abruptly enough. On the other hand, a mass balance leak detection method is capable of quantifying the leak flow rate very accurately and of detecting progressive leaks.

Recent Advances in Pipeline Monitoring and Oil Leakage Detection Technologies: Principles and Approaches

“…Its operation is based on the principle of mass conservation [129]. The principle states that a fluid that enters the pipe section remains inside the pipe until it exits from the pipeline section [130]. In a normal cylindrical pipeline network, the inflow and outflow fluid can be metered.…”

A Distributed Computing Solution Based on Distributed Kalman Filter for Leak Detection in WSN-Based Water Pipeline Monitoring

“…The software-based methods use field sensors to monitor the operational and hydraulic conditions of the pipeline, such as the measurement of the flow, pressure and temperature [ 16 , 25 , 36 , 54 ] and smart computational algorithms to process the measurements in order to detect and localize the occurrence of leaks on the pipeline [ 29 ]. Some of the software-based methods available in the literature include methods based on model estimation (e.g., Kalman filter [ 19 , 29 , 61 ], state observer [ 62 ], system identification [ 63 ], the impedance method [ 64 ]), methods based on signal processing (Negative Wave Pressure [ 32 ], Mass Balance [ 65 ], Pressure Point Analysis [ 66 ], Acoustic Correlation Analysis [ 67 ], Spectral Analysis Response [ 68 ]) and data-driven methods (Support Vector Machine [ 69 ], K-nearest neighbor [ 70 ], Naïve Bayes [ 69 ]). They involve the use of either intrusive sensors or non- intrusive sensors to monitor the internal pipeline parameters.…”

Study on an improved acoustic leak detection method for water distribution systems

“…The potential of these non-acoustic technologies *Corresponding author. Email: yangjin@cqu.edu.cn has been investigated (Martins and Seleghim 2009). Although they show some promise, the performances of the non-acoustic techniques are generally affected by both the quality of flow models and the corresponding solution, and any noise or other sources of errors are greatly amplified and tend to corrupt the solutions.…”