The evaluation of the MFL PIG, produced by the Dutch company Pipesurvey International, was carried out by CTDUT at its 14 inch test pipeline.
The test consisted of using several specially developed spools for use in LOOP 14, having many created and mapped defects, allowing the assessment of the capability of detection and the achievement of information about sizing and location of the various existing defects in spools.
By constructing 32 spools with fabricated defects, additional to those already existing in loop 14, CTDUTmade possible the evaluation of a wide diversity of situations. Among thousands of different configurations five were planned for Pipesurvey, representing five distinguished pipelines, with unknown defects.
At the end of the runs, Pipesurvey presented the inspection report, which was compared against the defects template, kept strictly confidential. The final result was fairly satisfactory and the comparative analysis and the evaluation of the inspection tool were forwarded, as previously agreed between parties, to Transpetro, as subsidy for their decision making processes.
The use of spools with mapped defects at LOOP 14 brings great opportunities both for PIG operators and manufacturers. A completely different way of use for PIGs improvement exists; in this case, the template of some special spools would be supplied by CTDUTto the PIG manufacturers and they would make their runs without providing any detection information to CTDUT. In such situation the confidentiality is in the opposite way: the PIG manufacturer obtains the detection information for its internal analysis and does not share, either with CTDUTor with anybody else, the performance level of its tool, making possible the utilization of such data for development and improvement.