The first of ClampOn’s groundbreaking corrosionerosion monitors (CEM) was due to become operational in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of last month. Destined for retrofitting in an unspecified BP brownfield application, it is one of ten ordered already by BP and other operators – including Total for a new North Sea field development – all of which were also expected to be delivered by the ClampOn headquarters manufacturing facility in Bergen, Norway, before the end of 2011.
Based on the company’s proven and highly regarded acoustic technology, and developed under a joint venture project with BP and Innovation Norway, the noninvasive monitors enable operators to obtain a realistic and quantifiable picture of wall thickness changes in a given section of pipe.
The new monitor was unveiled for the first time during Houston’s OTC show last May, and by then had already been 10 years in the making. With product quality, accuracy and durability transcending all other considerations for sensing devices expected to give many years’ uninterrupted service in harsh offshore environments, ClampOn co-founder and president Dag Aldal admits his team went back to the drawing board several times in that decadelong development span before they were entirely satisfied with the system.
Exterior and interior views of the robust ClampOn corrosion-erosion monitor.The CEM detects changes in wall thickness ultrasonically through transducers attached to a given section of pipe considered most prone to corrosion wear. It can be deployed at hotspots to monitor erosion development, and either retrofitted to existing pipelines and structures or installed under insulation on new pipelines.
The system can perform measurements on pipe diameters from 50mm and upwards and on material thicknesses ranging from 4mm to 35mm. During extensive testing, it has shown itself to be both physically robust and capable of withstanding changes in pipe temperature. According to ClampOn, changes in average wall thickness of as little as 1% can be measured in real time. A single array of sensors typically covers a 1m section, but there is no limit to the number of adjacent arrays that can be deployed. DM
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