Inspecting concealed pipeworkCopy Link

Background 

Pipework systems within industrial power plants contain many metres of concealed pipework.  Pipes may be buried, located in trenches, clad, lagged or difficult to access.  This concealment of pipework makes it difficult to inspect and monitor its condition.

The challenger is seeking solutions which will support existing maintenance and safety programmes and enable them to inspect concealed pipework to determine the possible presence of general or localised corrosion and to detect thinning of pipe walls.  

Whilst not limiting the technologies from solution providers, it is expected that solutions would consider innovations from some of the following areas:

• Water industry
• Oil and gas sector
• Chemical industry
• Civil engineering
• Sensors and advanced imaging
• Food industry

To meet the desired timescale and risks, it is preferred that the proposed solution, or the key part(s) of the solution, has been previously demonstrated in an industrial environment.  The solution should be achievable within health and safety requirements and regulations.

Rewards and benefits

Successful applicants will be given an opportunity to pitch to the Challenger. The package may also include:

• Support from the Catapults or the KTN
• Support in the development of a prototype or pilot
• Technical support
• A place in KTN or Catapult events
• A potential business collaboration

Solution Requirements

Functional Requirements

• A potential solution capable of:
• Detecting the wall thickness of pipes, with defined resolution capabilities
• Detecting general or localised corrosion (internal and external)
• Generating numeric output
• Providing real-time information to the operator
• Recording data whilst the pipework systems are operational

Technical Characteristics

• The technology must give significant confidence in the results with clearly defined limitations; anomalous results could necessitate costly and unnecessary inspections or plant outage
• The use of artificial intelligence for data acquisition and analysis will be considered but not for decision making
• Data will ideally be generated and stored on site.  Cloud and off-site data storage will be considered although this is not current practice

Deployment Timescale

• There is an immediate need for this technology
• Validation of solution: within 1 year
• Field trials: within 1 – 2 years
• Commercial implementation: within 2 - 3 years (quicker if possible)

Operating Conditions

The pipework:

• is generally metallic in nature, being made of either carbon steel, cast iron or ductile iron
• generally contains either sea water or demineralised water ranging from ambient temperature to 50^oC, typically at a neutral pH.  The transparency of the water can vary and may be low
• may be protected internally and/or externally either with paint or tar
• has been in-situ for up to 40 – 50 years
• may have welded joints or connected using mechanical means (e.g. bolted flange connections)
• is in varying lengths, of the order of 10s of metres
• ranges between 50mm and 1200mm in diameter
• has wall thickness between 4mm and 20mm
• will be operating under relatively low pressure (of the order of 10 to 15 bar)
• Limitations in capability against these various conditions should be identified e.g. loss of resolution at low diameters or at high temperatures.

Cost requirement and market opportunity

• There is a requirement to inspect many metres of pipes across multiple nuclear sites
• There are significant opportunities across other industrial sites as this is a national and international challenge
• The potential to eliminate plants needing to be taken offline due to pipe failure has enormous financial significance, potentially multi-million pounds

Eligibility and assessment criteria

Entrants to this competition must be:

• Established businesses, start-ups, SMEs or individual entrepreneurs
• UK based or have the intention to set up a UK base

Applications will be assessed on:

• Relevance to the topic
• Innovative nature of the subject
• Coherence of the proposed business model
• Feasibility/ economic viability
• Development potential
• Maturity of project/solution
• Ability to launch project quickly/Ease of implementation
• Price/quality ratio
• Suitability for the UK and European Market

IP and Potential Commercial Route

• Existing background IP associated with a potential solution will remain with Solution Provider(s). Where any new IP generation is envisaged, it will be subject to the mutual IP agreement of the Solution Provider(s) and Innovation Challenger.
• Any commercial deployment of transferred solution or newly developed solution, through licensing, joint venture, partnership or direct investment, will be subject to the commercial agreement between the Solution Provider(s) and Innovation Challenger.
• Where necessary, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) may be signed to uphold confidentiality in the engagement between the Solution Provider(s) and Innovation Challenger.
• Innovate UK and KTN do not take any share of IP ownership or enter into commercial venture through the NUiX programme.