Piglet – a new robotic solution to lower maintenance costs and improve safety in high pressure gas systems

“到目前为止，在石油和天然气加工中，高压和/或高温、安全和认证等挑战意味着机器人对在线基础设施的观察还没有带来好处。这导致世界各地的许多流程表现不佳，在最佳流速下运行，因此无法为运营商带来最佳收益。在油气利润面临压力的时候，主要参与者正在寻找创新的方法来提高现有工厂的绩效和收入。乙二醇脱水是天然气中最常见和最经济的脱水方法，其内部环境极端且具有挑战性，在50-200bar的天然气压力下运行。目前还没有机器人系统能够在操作过程中检查这些柱子。为了保持性能，应该识别并快速移除任何阻塞。可能会出现端口阻塞和其他问题，从而降低性能，降低流程吞吐量和工厂盈利能力。我们的概念是Piglet (Pigging for unpiggable lines)，它将向操作员提供实时视频馈送，以提供设施内部状况的真实图片。这将提供堵塞、结垢、结蜡或腐蚀的早期预警，这些预警可能导致系统发生危险故障和/或代价高昂的停机时间，包括潜在的危险人为干预。”

"Within oil & gas processing, the challenges of high pressure and or temperature, safety and certification has, until now, meant that the benefits of robotic viewing of online infrastructure has not been available. This results in many processes across the world under-performing, running under optimum flow rates - and therefore below optimum revenues for the operator. At a time when oil & gas profits are under pressure key players are looking for innovative ways to improve performance and revenues from existing plant.Glycol dehydration is the most common and economical means of removing water from natural gas and their interiors present an extreme and challenging environment, operating with natural gas at a pressure of around 50-200bar. There is currently no robotic system capable of inspecting the columns during operation. Any blockages should be identified and quickly removed in order to maintain performance. Blocked ports and other problems can occur that degrade performance, reduce process throughput and plant profitability. Our concept is Piglet (Pigging for un-piggable lines), which will provide a live video feeds to an operator, to give a true picture of the internal condition of the facility. This will provide early warning of plugging, scale, wax or corrosion, which may result in system dangerous failure and/or costly downtime involving potentially hazardous human intervention."