TPi November 2018

Inspection & testing

Plant turns to specialist over pipe blockage A CCTV camera system designed for surveying sewers has been put to a new use, investigating concerns about a pipe blockage at a gas plant. Instead of being guided underground into a drain or sewer, a push-rod CCTV drainage camera was guided 15m up a large CO 2 outlet pipe to try to locate the cause of a drop in flow of the CO 2 vent line. Drainage engineers based at the Lanes Group plc depot in Aberdeen, UK, were called in to survey the gas pipe at a biogas generation plant near Coupar Angus, in Perth and Kinross. of methane gas. The push-rod CCTV camera system is designed to be operated in sewer pipes that could contain volatile gases, so both Lanes and Mr Small were confident the survey could be carried out safely. Because the camera head was too large to fit through an access panel, a technician at the gas plant created a hole in the glass fibre gas pipe to allow it to be fed into the riser pipe.

The plant’s bio-methane service manager selected Lanes while visiting another plant and hearing how the drainage specialist had been called in to clean some pipes. He commented, “It was a bit of a light-bulb moment. I had thought our dip in flow rates might be caused by a pipe blockage so thought Lanes should be able to help. I called them on a Thursday, Lanes visited on Friday to scope the project, and they attended to carry out the pipe survey on the Monday. So, in terms of service delivery we got perfection.” Prior to carrying out the survey, Colin Small and his team shut down the gas purification plant and purged it

Colin Christie from Lanes said, “I’ve used the same equipment to survey new gas pipes before, but not a pipe in a biogas plant. I fed the camera up through the pipe for 15m, but the HD video images we recorded showed no sign of a blockage.” Mr Christie used a point lining kit – usually used to install a liner in a drain to rehabilitate a pipe – to carry out a temporary repair on the gas pipe by patching over the hole.

Lanes Group plc – UK sales@lanesgroup.co.uk www.lanesfordrains.co.uk

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TUBE PRODUCTS INTERNATIONAL November 2018

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