Digital Solutions In Flow Assurance and Asset Integrity: DeepSense

Abstract The pipeline’s introduction dates back into the 1860s, where they were used for the first time in the groundbreaking operations in the United States oil exploration and extraction. The first models were made out of wood and iron, but the evolution of this technology shown significant improvements both in the total throughput of the conducts but also in the safety of fluid conveying. Today, pipelines are still considered the safest and most reliable method for transporting hydrocarbons, ensuring consistent and controlled conditions along their entire route. However, maintaining pipeline integrity comes at a significant cost, especially in terms of flow assurance, where failures can lead to production downtime, equipment damage, and environmental harm. The level of control needed to maintain the operations efficient enough is rising year by year. For this reason, early detection and precise localization of anomalies are critical. Traditional integrity assessment techniques, while effective, are often costly, intrusive, and difficult to apply in the harsh environments where pipelines are typically located. Most importantly, the application of the technologies available today is linked to a lag time in response which almost always is weeks long. This has driven growing interest in smart, low-cost operations that can be more easily deployed in existing schedules. As the development of new technical and operational standards spread at daily rate, the research revolving around new devices capable of servicing the pipeline, without any kind of impact on daily operations gains increasing interest and has the potential to become a central aspect of the future’s pipeline technical assessment. In this paper, we introduce a compact, multiparametric and flexible inspection device designed specifically for quick and simple in-line pipeline monitoring. The main advantages we tried to reach can be summarized in three key points: quick, plug & play and reliable. To validate the device, it has been successfully tested on over 3,500 km of pipeline across various geographic locations and in this paper we present three different case studies which shows three challenging pigging scenarios, which shows the importance of developing universal tools in the pipeline inspection sector for proper problem solving process.