Fiber optic technology offers a number of advantages that makes it ideally suited for monitoring applications in the process industry:

• Passive sensor construction without any moveng parts
• Extremely accurate, very high resolution
• Functioning not influenced by electromagnetic induction
• Immune to humidity, water and vibrations
• Suitable for application in hazardous areas
• Very small dimensions
• No drift, not even over tens of years
• Operating temperatures up to 650°C
• Extremely durable
• Minimum cabling. Sensors can operate in series.
• Distributed measurement of temperature and deformation over tens of kms via a single fiber

 

 

The system consists of a grid of fiber optic cable, attached to the outer vessel surface and connected to a DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing) unit. The DTS unit continuously measures in real-time the skin temperature over the full area of the vessel wall and immediately raises an alarm if anywhere a hot spot is forming. Such a hot spot can arise when the internal insulation of the vessel does not function optimally or shows a “leak” at a particular spot. As temperatures can un up to as high as 650°C a special fiber optic cable is required. To install the system welding on the vessel is not required. The technology is also applied for a.o. storage tanks and reformer outlet systems.

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 Fiber optic monitoring for the process industry

LEAKALERT  operates on the principle of DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing) and detects and locates a beginning leak with a spatial resolution of one meter even if the pipeline has a length of 30 kms. Its functioning is based on measuring the difference in temperature between the medium (liquid or gas) transported by the pipeline and its surroundings. The temperature resolution is better than 0,1°C. The reading unit that is connected to the optical fiber cable immediately generates an alarm when a preset temperature value is reached. This technology has proved itself worldwide on many applications where a pipe leak would cause environmental pollution or human hazard (such as in case of ammonia). As the “sensors” (in actual fact the sensing cable) do not contain any electronics the system is ideally suited for operation in hazardous areas.

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 Leakalert