McDermott: Trends in Offshore Oil & Gas - GineersNow GineersNow Engineering Magazine Issue No. 021, McD | Page 14

Robot to Detect
Pipeline Leakages
Designed by
Indian Engineers Necessity is indeed the mother of invention,
especially for pipeline leakages.
Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. Called the Semi-Autonomous Pipeline
Exploration Robot, or SAPER for short,
the device can travel inside pipelines no
smaller than a few inches tall and identify the
defects of the pipeline’s innards. It could take
photographs and relay them to its controller
via sensors.
When the news frequently tell pipeline
problems along Pedder Road and Thane
in Santacruz in Mumbai, India, engineer
brothers Rohit and Rahul Kashyap thought
that something should be done with it. So
they took the matter into their hands and
developed their own device to detect the
leaks and cracks that cause such problems.
Rohit is a third year student of electronics
engineering in Vivekanand Education
Society’s Institute of Technology, while
Rahul is a student in Somaiya College. The
former said, “Most pipelines that carry water,
oil or gas are located underground where
they come under earth pressure apart from
traffic on the road surface above. With time
and age the metal degrades and corrodes,
causing leakage that is both expensive and
dangerous. Once a pipeline is damaged,
excavating the ground is the only way to
repair it.” The latter added that their device
can be manufactured for Rs 12,000-15,000
and has the potential to prevent leakage of
water, oil and gas from underground pipes
once it is fine-tuned.
According to the two, current techniques
in detecting leaks and cracks by the BMC
involve sounding mukadams who tap a stick
on the ground and detect faults by sound,
which are done barely once a year due to
lack of manpower. But BMC’s hyradulic
engineer Ashok Tawadia said that other than
the sounding mukadams, there are CCTV
cameras let to roam inside pipes to check for
leaks. Another technique is by releasing an
inert gas, which is helium, inside the pipeline
to identify if it emanates from a leakage.
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Oil Gas Leaders • May 2017