Today, there are more than 40 major transnational oil and gas pipelines traversing Europe, accounting for over 34,565 km of strategically critical pipeline infrastructure, 40% of which are over 40 years old and subject to corrosion induced catastrophic failures impacting negatively upon European society and its economy. With such an extensive and growing network of pipelines, and an increasing incidence of failures, it is no longer feasible to rely upon current intermittent manual inspection techniques to maintain safe operation, from the twin perspectives of probability of detection over such a large network, and consequence of failure given the hazardous materials being distributed. Clearly, a wide-area coverage structural health monitoring solution is overdue. The iPerm project has developed a permanent, intelligent and energy-efficient monitoring network which will deliver a step-change improvement over existing inspection systems, and thus a step change in the safety and reliability of Europe’s pipeline network.
Our vision is to capture 3.3% of the Oil & Gas segment, the fastest growing segment of the global NDT market, within five years following product launch aiming to add (cumulatively) €26.79 million to our top-line and generate more than €6.93 million in operating profit, resulting in an investment multiple of two times the European funding.
The purpose of the iPerm project is to help European and worldwide oil and gas companies to reduce the number of pipeline leaks and thereby increase safety standards. The overall objective is to address this challenge by developing a permanent, intelligent and energy-efficient monitoring network, which will deliver a step-change improvement over existing inspection systems, and thus a step change in the safety and reliability of Europe’s pipeline network. The project outcome comprises a guided wave pipeline monitoring system, which is permanently mounted on the outside of pipelines in environmentally hostile, safety critical or difficult to access areas.
