Detecting Corrosion in Oil Pipeline using Capacitor

• Main Author: Gwendolin Dumang anak Jakop, Gwendolin Dumang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2009
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/890/1/Gwendolin_Dumang_7321.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/890/

Internal-pipeline corrosion is a serious issue in oil and gas industry. This project aims to build a capacitive sensor using aluminium plates and analyzed the effect on the output voltage when corrosion occurred in the pipeline which carries different viscosities of oil. Corrosion in the oil pipeline affects the quality of liquid in it and causes leakage which pollutes the environment. It is time and cost consuming to replace the pipeline and the operators find it difficult to assess the condition inside the pipelines. This project covers only the oil pipeline and three types of oil with different viscosity are used to demonstrate the working principle of the capacitive detector. Simulation was done to verify the effects of capacitance to the output voltage. Iron(II) ion and iron(III) ion which are the products of early stage corrosion and rusting process respectively were added into the oil and readings were taken and recorded for analysis. Experiments were conducted to analyze the effect of different levels of corrosion i.e. early stage and rusting stage towards the output voltage. Based on the results obtained, the output voltage across the capacitive plates decreases as more iron ion present in the oil. The outcome from the comparison between early stage of corrosion and rusting stage were also done and the outcome was that the output voltage across the capacitive plates is lower in the rusting stage. Thus it can be concluded that the more severe is the corrosion in the pipeline, the lower is the output voltage measured across the capacitive plates.