Title: Leak detection and localisation on a gas pipeline using the gradient of squared pressure

Authors: Ghassan Alnwaimi; Hatem Boujemaa; Feras Alfosail; Nebras Sobahi

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia ' COSIM Laboratory, Sup'Com, University of Carthage, Tunisia ' Consulting Services Department, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran 31311, Saudi Arabia ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia

Abstract: In this paper, we suggest a new algorithm for leak detection and localisation on gas pipeline. We decompose the pipeline in different sections of length L. We put two pressure sensors at the beginning of the studied section at location x = iL and two other pressure sensors at the end located at x = (i + 1)L where i = 0, …, N – 1 is the number of the studied section of pipeline. We also use two mass flow rate sensors at the beginning and end of each section. Our algorithm uses the gradient of squared pressure to locate the leak. We show that our new algorithm allows to locate the leak with 1.2% error in distance. We tested our algorithm on a pipeline of length 15 km and the average error was around 180 m. Therefore, the location error is around 180/15,000 = 1.2%.

Keywords: leak detection; gas pipeline; pressure sensors; mass flow rate sensors; gradient of pressure; leak localisation; wireless sensors.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2022.123592

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2022 Vol.39 No.2, pp.75 - 82

Received: 04 Aug 2021
Accepted: 11 Aug 2021
Published online: 29 Jun 2022 *

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