How To Repair Orange Gas Pipes

Rapid Encapsulation of Pipelines Avoiding Intensive Replacement

Program Description:

Bandage atomic number 26, wrought fe, and blank steel natural gas distribution pipes—legacy pipes—make up 3% of the nearly 2 million miles of utility pipes in use, only account for a disproportionate number of gas leaks and piping failures compared to more recently replaced infrastructure. REPAIR seeks to reduce natural gas leaks from these pipes by developing a suite of technologies to enable the automated construction of new pipe inside existing pipe. The new pipage must come across utilities' and regulatory agencies' requirements, have a minimum life of 50 years, and have sufficient material properties to operate throughout its service life without reliance on the outside pipe. REPAIR will advance the state of gas distribution pipelines by incorporating smart functionality into structural blanket materials and developing new integrity/inspection tools. It will also create three-dimensional (3D) maps that integrate natural gas pipelines and next cloak-and-dagger infrastructure geospatial information with integrity, leak, and coating deposition data. The cost target is $0.5-1 meg per mile, including gas service disruption costs.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and country regulatory agencies oversee gas distribution pipes. The suite of technologies developed under REPAIR will require coordination amid multiple stakeholders and collaboration inside research programs to achieve commercial success.

Innovation Need:

Legacy pipe malfunctions create operating chance and legal liability for utilities, negatively touch arrangement owners' fiscal operation, and are a cost burden to gas consumers. The current approach to repairing legacy pipes is to excavate and supercede them, typically with high-density polyethylene pipe. The replacement cost ranges from $one-10 million per mile, depending on the piping'south location (e.thou., rural vs urban), caste of complexity of the excavation, such as congestion due to adjacent underground infrastructure, and costs for restoring roads. In improver, utilities incur costs whenever gas service is disrupted for repairs. REPAIR seeks to eliminate the highest cost components, digging and restoration, by rehabilitating pipes without their removal—in essence, by automatically amalgam a new pipe within the erstwhile.

Potential Impact:

REPAIR seeks to eliminate the highest piping rehabilitation cost components, excavation and restoration, by repairing pipes without their removal.

Security:

REPAIR projects should meliorate the sustainability of domestic natural gas distribution by economically rehabilitating legacy pipes.

Environment:

REPAIR will produce 3D maps and data management/visualization tools that integrate geospatial data for leak testing, integrity/inspection data, blanket deposition data, and locations of pipes and adjacent hugger-mugger infrastructure.