Monitoring and Diagnositics

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Leakage Monitoring and Detection System for

Glass-fibre Reinforced Plastic Pipes – GIMOS
The combination of an integrated pre-leakage detection system with glass-fibre
reinforced plastic pipes (GRP) offers a reliable, maintenance-free and
cost-effective solution for safe liquid-medium transportation.

The challenge
Power plants cooled with sea or river water require major
outage work and time for maintenance and service of the
essential cooling water intake systems. Due to the corrosive
nature of the sea or river water, these safety-classified
systems are often made of steel piping with inner rubber
coating, and regular inspection is highly recommended.
Even during outage, minimum one system has to be
operational. However, these systems have seen a series of
Sediments and corrosion on steel pipes
corrosion failures and even leaks in the past. These failures
due to cracked rubber coating and corrosion underneath
the coating required huge repair and maintenance efforts.

The solution Combination of GRP and monitoring features

GIMOS is a reliable solution for the safe transport of liquids
by combining GRP pipes with an integrated pre-leakage
monitoring system. Continuous status tests of the GRP
pipe wall thickness identify and localize emerging failures
or damage at a very early stage. The cyclic analysis and
transfer of the measured data enables monitoring of the
components independent of their location. Consequently,
GIMOS prevents leaks before they occur.
leads to:
• Increased system reliability and availability
(non-corrosive pipe material)
• Reduced maintenance efforts (as long as the
pre-leakage monitoring system shows no alarm,
no inspection or repair work is necessary)
• Optimized spare parts management
– Reduction of spare parts to be kept on stock
(pre-leakage alarm, ordering when system
degradation process is detected)
– Database with master data of each pipe
segment facilitates spare-part ordering process
• Reduced efforts during outage
– Reduced service personal due to less work to
be performed
– Less cleaning necessary except regular flushing
and draining
– Reduced outage time due to less inspection
efforts

Application examples: industrial plant, underground

AREVA NP
 Monitoring and Diagnositics

Leakage Monitoring and Detection System for GRP Pipes – GIMOS 2/2

Technical details
Conductive sensor layers are integrated during the GRP
manufacturing process. An external effect on the conduc-
tive layers gives an electric feedback. Using both sensor Monitoring
Module
layers as capacitors in combination with a test signal results
in leakage detectability and pre-leakage alarm signaling.
A connection to the outside of the pipe for every conduc-
tive layer is established with a metal bolt. These bolts act
as electric connection for diagnosis electronics to the pipe.
The diagnosis electronic is sealed in a robust metal box.
It contains a power supply, a micro controller-based mea-
surement system and a bus controller for communication
Coupling Sensor Simulated Erosion
with the central monitoring unit. Additional accelerometers
and temperature sensors can be applied to get further Pre-series demonstrator
information for aging and fatigue monitoring.

Central Monitoring Unit

Monitoring Module

Sensor Layer
Schematic representation of the GIMOS solution

Your benefits at a glance

• Increased system reliability and availability
• Reduced maintenance efforts
• Optimized spare parts management
• Reduced efforts during outage

Your contact: monitoring-and-diagnostics@areva.com AREVA NP

PB-G-275-V2-ENG_09/17
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