Pipeline Monitoring with Farys

Project introduction

• Scope: Leak and intrusion detection for a water transport pipeline
• Client: Farys
• Location: Brussels, Belgium
• Duration: 2020 - present

Project context

DALI is a real-time pipeline monitoring system that continuously detects and localizes leaks and intrusions using fiber optics, based on Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS). A fiber optic cable is inserted in the water pipeline and connected to the DAS, which detects the sounds of leaks and intrusions that are transferred onto the fiber. The DALI web interface shows the condition of every meter of pipeline in real time, allowing you to precisely locate leaks and intrusions in your pipeline before they get any worse.

Project results

Farys contracted Fluves to continuously monitor a 6 km pipeline with a high leak risk in the Brussels region. The cable was manually inserted into the pipeline during maintenance works by a specialized contractor in February 2020 and connected to a DAS system which records acoustic vibrations, turning the cable into an array of thousands of microphones. After a period of intensive testing, a fully automatic, machine-learning based monitoring system was set up which detects leaks and other anomalies with an accuracy of 10 m. The monitoring system has been continuously running since October 2020 and has been successfully tested with several blind tests in which synthetic test leaks are created.

Whenever an incident is detected, Farys is alerted automatically via email and the location is revealed on a map on the dashboard. Long-term monitoring results are summarized in a bespoke format that supports Farys' maintenance strategy.

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“DALI has a high potential to detect leaks and intrusions in our transport pipeline network in real time and at affordable cost”

‍— Wim Jacobs – Innovation Manager at FARYS

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More information

Visit DALI, read the DALI brochure or let’s have a chat via sales@fluves.com.