Feature sponsored by Test & measurement
HOW AIR LIQUIDE CUT COSTS AND IMPROVED PIPELINE EFFICIENCY BY SLASHING AIR AND NITROGEN EMISSIONS
In today’s climate, sustainability is becoming increasingly important, as is the need to maximise productivity and cut costs, and Air Liquide has been able to meet and exceed its targets in all these areas by using the latest ultrasonic measuring equipment from Fluke. As well as turning its environmental goals into reality, Air Liquide has minimised wastage and boosted pipeline efficiency by controlling costly air and nitrogen leaks.
its energy efficiency, while reducing its carbon footprint. The company describes oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen as being at the core of its activities since being founded in 1902. In Italy, Air Liquide has more than 1,700 employees serving over 50,000 industrial customers and 100,000 patients, as well as in excess of 2,500 hospitals and clinics. At its dual mixed refrigerant (DMR) refinery in Syracuse, Sicily - which operates 24 hours a day - the company recognised that it needed to carry out compressed air and nitrogen measurements every two years on all the pipelines around the refinery, including interconnecting pipelines, to guarantee that they are able to operate as efficiently and safely as possible. The Italian environmental regulator ISPRA also demands mandatory annual Leak Detection And Repair (LDAR) checks to be carried out to detect and reduce fugitive emissions.
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HIGH INTEGRITY LEVELS The refinery has a total of 16,435m of pipelines - 7,000m for air and 9,435m for nitrogen - as well as 5km of interconnecting pipelines. To carry out the annual LDAR campaign, and biyearly compressed air and nitrogen measurements, Air Liquide called in the Belgium-based organisation, Intero - The Sniffers. With its goal of helping its clients contribute to a better environment, the company says its role is always to drive its clients’ environmental ambitions forward and help them maintain high integrity levels for their buried pipelines.
Intero - The Sniffers checked Air Liquide’s pipelines by taking ultrasonic measurements using the ii910 Precision Acoustic Imager from Fluke, which combines a frequency range of
62
s a world leader in providing gases, technologies, and services to the industrial and health sectors around the world, Air Liquide is continually searching for ways to increase
2kHz to 100kHz, with 64 digital MEMS microphones to simplify the process of discovering leaks earlier than would otherwise be possible. Capable of being used with minimal training, the ii910 can detect a 0.005 cubic feet per minute (CFM) leak at 100PSI from up to 32.8 feet (a 2.5cm3
/sec leak at 7
bar from up to 10m). For ease of use, the device also offers a battery life of more than six hours and a 1,280 x 800 resolution (1,024,000 pixels) LCD display.
HIGHLY SENSITIVE SENSORS Because leaks produce sounds (which humans cannot hear), ultrasonic measurement can measure the sound value present at various points of the pipeline and compare them with each other, making it possible to check many measuring points and longer distances within a short timeframe. Using Fluke’s SoundSight technology, highly sensitive sensors on the ii910 Precision Acoustic Imager transmit ultrasonic signals to the detector for measuring and processing. The peak value of the detected sound signal is converted into a visual representation and displayed on-screen. The team of Intero - The Sniffers using the ii910 were able to find several leaks on the refinery’s air pipeline and multiple leaks on the nitrogen system. According to analysis by Intero - The Sniffers, the payback factor of using the Fluke equipment to measure leaks – specifically at pipeline connections, flanges, open ends, and stem valves – meant that the project could repay its costs within just one month after the repair of all leaks.
DOWNTIME MUST BE AVOIDED Sebastiano Carpinteri, process engineer at Air Liquide Priolo, says: “Of course, having no leaks is the ideal situation but the goal is always to reduce leaks as much as possible. Because we run a 24-hour operation, downtime must be avoided at every opportunity and we must get back the results of any checks that we make in the shortest
April 2023 Instrumentation Monthly
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