Proceedings of the 5IhWorld Congress on Intelligent Control %3EbtJi”B%%~J+ $81k*’4

and Automation, June 15-19.2004, Hangzhou,P.R. China a 15 - 19 a, =pe~btf+

2004 p- 6

Oil Pipeline Leak Detection and Location Using Double

Sensors Pressure Gradient Method*
Feng Jian and Zhang Huaguang
School of Information Science & Engineering
Northeastern University. Shenyang, 110004, China
tjneu@l63.com

Abstract-Monitoring of oil pipeline is an important task
for economical and safe operation, loss prevention and
environmental protection from crude .oil emission. A leak
detection of oil pipeline, therefore, plays a key role in the
overall integrity Monitoring for a pipeline system. Especially
for a long pipeline operated alongside of dense cropland, a leak
detection system is an indispensable condition to allow its
construction. In this paper, a leak detection and location
approach based on double sensors pressure gradient method is
proposed. An industrial application to a long oil pipeline is also
illustrated. The result of application supports the effectiveness
of the proposed method.
Index Terms-fault detection, double sensors, pressure
gradient, flow difference, pipeline
I. INTRODUCTION
In the last decades, there is increasing demand on safely
running and leak detection of oil pipeline. In order to satisfy
this demand, more and more methods are developed. In
nature, this is a question of fault diagnosis. From an
academic point of view, there are three kinds of available
methods for pipeline leak detection being presented. The
first uses analytical model-based status observer, and the
main idea are to construct a analytical model-based status
observer to approximate the status of actual system up to a
given level of accuracy. This kind of method makes use of
residual error of observer and actual system. The
disadvantage of analytical model-based method is that the
accurate analytical mathematics model of oil transporting
pipeline must he found when designing a fault detector, and
that it is quite difficult if not impossible. The second is
called method of signal processing. The main advantage of
this method is that the difficulty, constructing accurate
analytical mathematics model of pipeline, can be
circumvented. A disadvantage is that the method can’t
easily be used for early, potential default. The third is
knowledge-based method. This method does not need
quantificational mathematics model, but fully utilizes expert
diagnosis knowledge and diagnosed object information.
Especially, it applies to nonlinear system and great intricate
system.
From an engineering point of view, the default
diagnosis community has developed two main kinds of
methods for detecting and locating of oil pipeline leak ‘’!
One is the method of inner duct. This method is too difficult
to adapt the need of real time. The other is the method of
outer duct. The hardware method of outer duct is not
adaptive to having built pipelines, and its engineering
implement is extreme expensive. The software method of
outer duct has much advantage, for example in the aspects
of continuous work and real time. Along with computer
technology, signal processing and fault detection theory.
this method has become the mainstream of study in the
domain of default diagnosis. Because of complexity of
actual leak diagnosis in pipeline, any single method is not
applicable to solve the idiographic problem. Due to
importing various information of diagnosed object, the
combination scheme of signal processing method and
knowledge-based method receives widely attention recently.
Motivated by the above methods, in this paper, we propose
a new location method for the leak of oil pipeline, which we
call double sensors pressure gradient method (DSPGM).
This method is much better in the aspect of real time than
the method proposed in [5] and [6].

This work is supponed by NSF ofChina Grant #60214017 lo Zhang Huaguang and NSF of Shenyang City Grant # 1022033-1-07 to Zhang Huaguang.

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0-7803-8273-01041520.00 02004 IEEE
 11. PtPELINE DESCRIPTION of 1 for its uncertainty. The space partial differentials
with respect to x in (4) can he approximated by
When oil flows in pipeline, its status is expressed by
pressure, density, velocity and temperature. Usually, the
curvature radius of pipeline is much bigger than diameter of
pipeline, and the oil density and pipe cross-section area are
constant. The continuity and momentum equations
where Q, and Q, denote the mass flow of the beginning
governing on one dimensional transient flow are "I
and end in pipeline, L is the length of the pipeline. The
a~ aQ
A-+-=O,
function (7) is the formula of pressure falling in oil duct
at
after leak appearance.
_- aP
1 a Q +-+--- 1 aQ'
- -pg sin @-- 2fg' , (2)
A at ax 2 ~ ? ax
p D~A' 111. LEAKDETECTION METHOD
with P the pressure (pa), Q the mass flow ( k g k ) , p
the liquid density ( k g /m3),x the length co-ordinate When oil pipeline works normally, the pressure and
(m),t the time co-ordinate (s), g the gravity ( d s ' ) ) , A flow of both the beginning and end in pipeline

the cross-section area (m'), D the pipeline diameter (m),

e
( , P, , Qj , Q. ) remain invariable on the whole, where
Q, ,Q, ,f: and P, denote the flow and the pressure of the
f one dimensional frication coefficient. Assuming the
convective changes in velocity and compressibility to he beginning and the end in pipeline respectively. According to
the principle of mass balance, .the flow difference,
negligible, then
AQ = Qi -e,, is near to zero. They approximately satisfy
normal distribution. Their mean are em, P,, and AQ,
Considering pipeline is horizontal, substituting (3) into (I) respectively. In other words, they all fluctuate in a narrow
and (2) yields range centering on their mean. We can calculate their mean
in non-leak status by (8),
(4)
em= &e), (sa)
Equation (4) is called predigested equation of pressure 1, = E(P,) 9 (8h)
falling in oil pipeline before in normal transporting status. AQ," = W Q ) . @C)
A leak at a point, which is x, m away ,from the The sign E denotes mathematical expectation. Once
beginning of pipeline, with outflow^ leak occurs, the pressure of the beginning and end in
Q, =nK, (5) pipeline (e ,P, ) will fall, and the flow difference ( AQ )
and 1 t 0 , produces a discontinuity in system (1 j and (2)'*] will rise. In order to improve detection robustness, we must
As consequence the pipeline with the leak must he handled introduce threshold. If the 'sampled data satisfy all the
as two pipelines or two sections with a boundary condition following conditions, perhaps leak happens.
in-hetween
Qr, = Q:, + Q,, , 16)
e <em -Threshold(e) (9a)

where Q:, and QZ, denote the mass flow at the sections < Cm- Threshold(P,) (9h)

before and after the leak point, respectively, Q,, denotes AG > AQ, + Threshold(AQ) (9c)

the outflow at the leak point. Since the dent and leak 2; E and AG denote respective mean calculated

modify behavior of the fluid in a different way, the with a fixed length of data closed to the time of detecting.
boundary condition ( 6 ) describes only the leak's effect; the The changes of pressure and flow difference in pipeline
dent's effect cannot he modeled by only changingthe sign before and aAer leak appearance are shown in Fig. 1.

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4 assumed that the parameter f and two extremes' pressure
I L
AQ
Fig. I The changes ofpressure and flaw dilkence
in pipeline before and after leak appearance
A Q can he also used to calculate the value of outflow.
To distinguish between chinging work status and true leak,
reference [9] presents their laws, 'leak can he detected
exactly according to their character. This will reduce the
ratio of false alarm greatly.
IV. LEAK LOCATION METHOD
Assuming that the pressure'gradient, before and after
the leak point, are equally distributed throughout each duct,
we can rewrite (7) in following form,
where I: , P, and P, denote the pressure of the
beginning, end and leak point in pipeline, respectively, L
denotes the length of pipeline from the beginning to the end
(km), and x, denotes the distance away from the
beginning of the pipeline. Further, we can get the location
equation,
Reference [IO] mentioned a method by which the
space partial differentials could be computed, hut they
in pipeline were constant either before leak appearance or
after, they used the same parameter f to obtain -
aP
ax
lrsv,
and
ax
lx,izsL. Leak may occur any point in pipeline. It is
stochastic incident. The pressure and f a r e not constant in
', two sections, moreover, the parameter f is much difficult
r to be gained. In order to circumvent this, the method of
double pressure sensors is proposed. We may install four
pressure sensors at two extremes of pipeline, two (s, ,s2) in
the beginning and the other two ( s3,s4 ) in the end, as
shown in Fig. 2(a). The distance between s, and s2 is
/,? , and the distance between s3 and s4 is l X d .The
changes of pressure gradient in pipeline, which occur before
and after leak appearance, are shown in Fig. 2(b). The
gradient calculated with (IO) can be approximated by (12)
as follow
In engineering practice, the measured value of pressure
must have been disturbed by noise. If we compute.the
gradient of two sections using instantaneous measured
value of pressure after leak appearance, there will bring
greater errors. So we can compute ap -Ia.,x<, and -
aP
ax lx,sxsL
with a fixed length of datum closed to the time of having
detected leak appearance. Each pressure will be substituted
by its mean in a length of time. Equation (12) can he
revised as follow
norma1 preerrurr
gradient
(1, Prism S l " s 0 r J in pcglini (b)?e,changcj ofprniurr pdirnt
Fig, 2 pressure sensors and thc changes ofpressure gradient
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V. LOCALEEXPERIMENT
RESULTS
The method above was tested to locate leak in a
pipeline, which is in Shengli Oil field. It is 14.1 17 km long
and with an inner diameter of 273 mm and the beginning
mean pressure of 0.4 Mpa. To obtain pressure gradient and
flow difference, we have installed two high precision
pressure sensors and one flow sensor at each extreme of the
duct. There was a tap located 6 km away from the
beginning of the pipeline, which imitated true leak. Tests
have been taken 20 times successfully. All of the leaks
could have been detected. The average location error was
200 m, which is about 1.42 percent ofthe length ofthe duct.
The precise of location satisfies the need of engineering on
the whole.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents the method and its application of
double sensors pressure gradient method together with a
flow difference and pressure detection method, for detecting
and locating leak in oil pipeline using only measurements at
the extremes of the duct. The application results are shown
that the pressure gradient method can achieve satisfying
location precision of leak. The locale test results provide a
demonstration of the feasibility and veracity of the
proposed method in detecting and locating leak.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to Chai Zefeng, who carried
out part of the experimental work, to the National Natural
Science Foundation Council of China and the Government
of Shenyang City, which financially supported this research
under grant no. 60274017 and grant no. 1022033-1-07. The
authors wish to thank the reviewers for their comments on
the manuscript improvement.
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