Revolutionising the safety and productivity of Oil and Gas piping with the new Acoem Piping Monitoring Solution

Executive summary

Until now, the process of monitoring critical onshore or offshore pipes has been costly, labour intensive and could only provide measurements for a particular point in time – making the data unreliable for decision making, susceptible to greater inaccuracies and potentially dangerous for the pipeline itself and the people operating the platform. But the risks associated with pipeline monitoring for maximising flow rate have now been eliminated with the development and implementation of the new Acoem Piping Monitoring Solution – the newest addition to the Acoem predictive maintenance ecosystem – designed specifically for the Oil and Gas industry.

Customer 1: Major Oil and Gas player in Algeria
Application: Onshore oil and gas platform

Customer 2: Major Oil and Gas player in Congo
Application: Offshore Oil and Gas platform

The Challenge

With an ever-growing demand for energy, especially in the current global geo-political situation, the Oil and Gas industry is continually under pressure to increase production. But to boost flow rate safely and efficiently, accurate monitoring of piping vibration is crucial to avoid potential hazards like cracking in the pipe, overheating or larger critical failures which may have catastrophic consequences.

Precise and ongoing vibration monitoring is mandated by standards that apply across onshore and offshore production facilities worldwide, including set guidelines for the avoidance of vibration-induced fatigue or failure in pipework.

Acoem was approached by two existing major Oil and Gas players in North and West Africa to develop a solution that would help them mitigate risk when it came to optimising pipe production. With piping installations designed to last 40-50 years, they were looking for a long-term, sustainable system that could be easily implemented and automated without needing to invest in new hardware. It was also crucial to reduce or eliminate the need for expert technicians on site, lower the level of manual involvement and significantly improve equipment lifecycle.

The Solution

Rather than rely on hardware alone to solve these challenges, Acoem focused on the creation of a new, targeted remote diagnostics software module that would alleviate the problems associated with unreliable pipe vibration data.

Based on the physics of piping design, isometrics and the dimensions of the piping itself, Acoem leverages specific algorithms to advance piping vibration monitoring technology with a proprietary module that automatically interacts with the customers’ existing Acoem Falcon, Eagle or MV-x to provide real-time and precise vibration measurements and diagnostics with Energy Institute Guidelines and Wachel standards integrated into the system.

Available via the NESTi4.0 AI-driven platform, this powerful remote diagnostics tool gives these customers a thorough understanding of vibration levels on their onshore or offshore assets at any time. That includes identifying the source of the vibration transmission and intensity, empowering them to implement changes to production flow without any risk or safety issues.

Using the same simple traffic light system as other NESTi4.0 diagnostics, the Piping module visually communicates threat levels scaled from 1 to 5 based on real-time changes in vibration, flowrates, temperature variations, gas composition, basic sediment and water (BSW) ratios, pressure and others process parameters.

The Outcome

Major Oil and Gas player in Congo began utilising the Piping module almost two years ago, (prior to its commercial release) for its offshore platform while a second Major Oil and Gas player in Algeria has been using the Piping module for its two complete onshore liquefied natural gas facilities since December 2022.

With ongoing and complete data, these oil and gas facilities now have the remote tools to fully understand the vibration levels at their onshore or offshore sites at any time. The combination of Acoem sensors, the Piping module and NESTi4.0 allows them to easily comply with international industry standards and implement changes to flow rate without risk.

Adding the Piping module to their existing Acoem monitoring protocol is helping them facilitate safe flow rate variations to increase production in the immediate term and enhancing the lifetime of assets in the long term.

Other benefits experienced since the Piping module was introduced at these two sites include:

Instantaneous, automatic classification of piping vibration according to VDI3842 (Wachel Criteria) and Energy Institute standards via graphical tool
Being able to identify the exact source and cause of vibration
Access to raw data for more precise analysis
The ability to integrate Piping module data into a single user-friendly platform viewable from your mobile device, whether you are using offline (Falcon) or online (Eagle and MV-x) continuous monitoring
Lower cost of manual monitoring with no need vibration experts on site
Increased level of operator safety
A cost-effective solution that uses existing hardware

For more information about adding the Acoem Piping module to your assets, read our press release and product sheet or contact us.