ICSP2014 Proceedings

LEAKAGE DETECTION IN A CO2 PIPELINE USING ACOUSTIC EMISSION TECHNIQUES

Ma Yifan a, Cui Xiwanga, Yan Yong a,b, Ma Lin a,c, Han Xiaojuana
a
School of Control and Computer Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206,
P R China
b
School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NT, UK
c
ETII, Faculty of Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
shanximayifan@163.com,cuixiwang2010@162.com,yongyan55@hotmail.com

ABSTRACT the transportation process. Pipe erosion, corrosion,

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is considered
to be one of the most promising options in dealing with the
problem of global warming, where long distance
transmission pipeline is often used for transporting captured
CO2 to the storage site. A pipe leak detection and location
system is established in the present work. An Acoustic
emission (AE) signal occurs when CO2 leak takes place. The
signal propagates along the pipe and can be recorded by
acoustic sensors mounted on the pipe. Experimental tests
were performed to identify the leak location in the pipe
through wavelet transform (WT) and empirical mode
decomposition (EMD) of the AE signal. The relationship
between the distance of two sensors and the leak location is
investigated. Experimental results demonstrate that the
maximum error in the estimation of the leak location is less
than 5%.
mechanical failures, construction defects, natural disasters,
and other unknown factors are considered to be the main
contributors to the potential failure of the CO2 pipelines.
Early detection and prompt response to the leak can
significantly reduce the environmental damages and human
and financial losses of any accidental release of CO2 from
the transmission pipelines [5, 6].
In this work, a method for early detection of CO2
leakage from a pipeline based on acoustic emission (AE) is
presented. Considering the multi-mode, wide band and
dispersion characteristics of AE signals, empirical mode
decomposition and transform are used for signal processing.
For verification of this method, a lab scale CO2 pipe leak
and detection system is designed and built. Experimental
tests were performed with a specified leak source under
different pipe conditions and the leakage locations were
detected with the proposed technique.

Index Terms—Acoustic emission, pipe leakage; signal
processing; empirical mode decomposition (EMD); wavelet
transform
1. INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, tremendous shifts in the natural world
have happened, including the thawing of permafrost,
melting glaciers, and rising sea levels, all of which are due
to global warming [1]. The increasing concentration of
carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is the direct cause
of these situations. It is reported that the annual emission of
CO2 globally is over 31.6 billion tons mainly from burning
fossil fuels, which contains 8.6 billion tons of carbon,
leading to the total atmospheric burden of CO2 reaching to
400 ppm [2]. CCS technology is an emerging tool to reduce
the CO2 releasing to the atmosphere. CO2 produced by fossil
fuel and biomass-fired power stations can be captured and
then transported by pipelines to suitable sites for permanent
storage, e.g. depleted oil reservoirs, abandoned gas fields or
deep saline aquifers. There were approximately 5,800 km of
such CO2 pipelines already in operation in 2008 in the USA
[3, 4]. However, unpredictable leakage can happen during
2. SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF THE ACOUSTIC
SIGNALS DURING A GAS LEAKAGE
Acoustic emission from a gas leakage is caused by the
turbulent jet flow through the leaking holes or cracks on a
high pressure pipe. If the leak CO2 jet does not encounter
any obstacles, acoustic radiation power is proportional to the
eighth-power of the jet flow velocity [7], namely:
ρ 2 D 2u 8 (1)
W = Kv
ρ0 c0
where W is the acoustic radiation power, ρ0c0 is the acoustic
impedance of the environment, ρ is the density of the gas,
i.e. CO2, D is the diameter of the leakage hole, u is the CO2
jet speed and Kv is the Lighthill number. If the leakage is
from a circular hole, the acoustic wave can be seen as a
spherical wave, thus the value of the maximum sound
pressure can be calculated as follows:
K v D ρ 0 um 2 M a 2 (2)
pm =
2π r
where pm is the maximum sound pressure, um is the
maximum jet speed of CO2, Ma is the Mach number of the
jet at the leak hole, and r is the radius of the spherical wave.

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 Spectral characteristics of the acoustic signals are
related to many factors, such as gas jet speed, temperature,
size and shape of the leakage hole. It can be estimated using
the following equation:
u T0 0.5
f y max = St ( )( )
D T
(3)
where St is the Strouhal number, T0 is the ambient
temperature, and T is the temperature of the jet in the
leakage hole. It can be seen that the release jet speed, which
is dominated by the pressure of the pipe, has a substantial
impact on the magnitude and frequency characteristics of
the signal from the jet [8,9].
The spectral features of leak acoustic signals can be
expressed by relative spectral density of the acoustic
radiation power:
1 dW f u c0
y=
W df 5D c
where y is the relative spectral density, Wf is the acoustic
radiation power with a frequency lower than f and c is the
local speed of sound.
3. ALGORITHM METHODS OF CO2 PIPE LEAKAGE
DETECTION AND LOCALIZATION
3.1. Acoustic emission detection
Because the high frequency components of the acoustic
signal attenuate quickly, traditional detection methods
cannot capture information from the signal effectively.
Acoustic emission tests performed in this paper are based on
the transient sound wave generated by the CO2 jet into the
atmosphere from the leakage [10], and the method is widely
used for non-destructive testing (NDT) such as for leak
detection of pipelines and valves. The AE signal, generated
during CO2 leaks, contains the inherent information about
the leak hole, that can be analyzed and used for leak
localization. The schematic diagram of the leakage detection
system employed is depicted in Fig. 1.
Sensor 1 Leak hole Sensor 2
t1 t2
CO2 pipeline
d
D
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of leakage detection
Sensors 1 and 2 are mounted on the upstream and
downstream of the leak hole, respectively. Calculating the
time difference that two sensors received the acoustic
signals emitted by the leakage, the distance, d, between the
leak hole and sensor 1 can be obtained using (5):
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D − vΔt
d= (5)
2
where D is the distance between sensor 1 and sensor 2, v is
the speed that acoustic emission signals propagate along the
CO2 pipe, and ∆t is the time difference that two sensors
received the signals [11] which can be estimated from the
following cross-correlation function:
1
Rxy (m) =
N
∑(x(n)y(n + m)) (6)
where x(n) and y(n) are the acoustic emission signals
recorded by the two sensors. Rxy(m) is the cross correlation
function of the two signals, N is the length of the signal, m
ranges from 0~N-1, The time difference can be derived
according to the maximum value of Rxy(m). The peak value
of Rxy(m) is defined as correlation coefficient.
(4) 3.2. De-noising techniques
Acoustic signals captured by the sensors are usually weak
and contain strong background noise that need to be filtered
out. In this work, wavelet transformation is applied to de-
noise the signal. The method consists of the following three
steps [12]:
Step 1: Wavelet decomposition;
Step 2: Modify the wavelet coefficients;
Step 3: Reconstruct the signals wavelet.
Using db6 wavelet function to decompose signals and
choose an appropriate default threshold, the unit operation,
environmental and background noise can be removed
effectively. Experimental results have shown that the
correlation coefficient of the two de-noised signals can
reach a value of 0.7, which makes the locating of the leak
hole more accurate. Most prominent characteristics of the
AE signals are multi-mode, wide band and dispersive. These
should be considered in leak source location [13, 14]. EMD
is a method for analyzing nonlinear and non-stationary
signal data. In this work, EMD was used to obtain the
Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) [15].
Fig. 2. Schematic of experimental set-up
4. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
79
A CO2 leak detection and localization system is designed
and constructed. The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2.
Experiments were carried out with a six-meter-long steel
pipe with 2 mm wall thickness and external diameter of 50.8
mm (2 inches). Acoustic emission signals generated from
the leakage transported along the CO2 pipe. The AE signals
can be substantially distorted after multiple reflections,
attenuation and waveform conversion in the material before
they reach the two sensors allocated on either side of the
leak hole. To reduce the influence of this distortion, the
leakage hole was located at 200 mm from the left-hand-side
of the pipe (Fig. 2). A pressure gage was installed at the
right-hand-side end of the pipe in order to measure the
pressure of the pipe. The leakage was from a circular hole of
2 mm in diameter. Pressurized CO2 was used in the
without gas leak. A pencil was used to impact the pipe and
the two sensors received the acoustic signals produced.
40dB was set to be a threshold to reduce the influence of
noise. Four different distances, D, between the two sensors
were employed (shown in Table 2), and the tests repeated 10
times for each distance setting. Therefore, a total of 40
speed measurements were obtained as shown in Fig. 3. With
the increase in the distance between the two sensors, the
speed of the AE signal decreases gradually. According to
the theory of wave propagation, low frequency component
of the acoustic signal attenuates slower and propagates
longer than the high frequency component. Using Equation
(7), the average speed of the 40 tests is calculated to be
5002.5 m/s.
40

experiments and it was fed into the pipe from a CO2 v= ∑v

k =1
k pk (7)
cylinder. The purity of the CO2 cylinder was 99.9% for
industrial use. Due to the limitation of the laboratory where v is the mean speed, vk is the speed for test
conditions, although the maximum pressure of the pipe can number k, and pk is the probability of the speed.
reach to 4 MPa, for safety reasons, this work was conducted 5500
under 0.5 Mpa. D=200mm
Two sensors were mounted on both sides of the leak D=300mm
D=400mm
hole through vacuum grease. The specifications of the
D=450mm
speed (m/s)

sensors employed are depicted in Table 1. The frequency

range of the sensors is 15~70 kHz with a resonant frequency 5000
of 40 kHz. A 2-channel AE system is used for signal
acquisition at a sampling rate of 500 kHz. The AE signals
are pre-amplified by a Soundwel PAI with a bandwidth of
10 kHz ~ 2.5 MHz operating at 40 dB amplification. Four
scenarios of difference arrangements of the two sensors, in 4500
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
terms of spacing between them and the location of sensor 1, number of measurement (n)
were investigated, as shown in Table 2. Fig. 3. Estimation of the velocity based on leak break method

Table 1 sensor specification

Specifications Parameters
Sensor model SR40M
Manufacturer SoundWel
Size(mm) Φ22*36.8 a b c
Operating temperature -20~120℃
Interface type M5-KY
Frequency range 15~75kHz
Resonant frequency 40kHz
Sensitivity peak >75dB
Fig. 4. Time domain waveform of the acoustic signal
Table 2 Distances(mm) Between Sensor 1, Sensor 2 and the Before each gas leak experiment being carried out,
Leakage Source, for the four Cases Studied
background/environment noise was measured when the CO2
Case studied Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 cylinder was turned off. It was found that the amplitude of
d 100 100 100 150 the background noise in the lab was very low. When the
cylinder was on, CO2 was released to the pipe from the CO2
D-d 100 200 300 300
cylinder, the signals captured by the sensor are shown in Fig.
D 200 300 400 450 4. There was no leakage in the stage of a to b and the
Before performing the tests, lead breaks were used to amplitude of the signal was almost zero. In contrast, when
evaluate the speed of AE signals propagated along the pipe the leak took place, i.e. from b to c when the release hole

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 Amplitude(mV)

Amplitude (mV)
4000
500
(a) 0 (a) 2000
-500
0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0 50 100 150 200 250
Amplitude(mV)

2000

Amplitude (mV)
500
(b) 0 (b) 1000
-500
0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0 50 100 150 200 250
Time(s) Frequency(kHz)
Fig. 5. Original AE signals (a) waveform 1 received by Fig. 6. Acoustic emission signal spectra (a) sensor 1 (b)
sensor 1 (b) waveform 2 received by sensor 2 sensor 2

5 500

Rn IMF8 IMF7 IMF6 IMF5 IMF4 IMF3 IMF2 IMF1

Rn IMF8 IMF7 IMF6 IMF5 IMF4 IMF3 IMF2 IMF1

-5 0
2 50
-2 0
0.2 40
-0.2 0
0.1 20
-0.1 0
0.05 10
-0.05 0
0.05 10
-0.05 0
0.02 10
-0.02 0
0.01 10
-0.01 0
0.01 10
-0.01 0
0 0.01 0.02 0 20 40 60 80 100
T(s) Frequency (kHz)

Fig. 7. Time and frequency domains of IMF component

was unplugged, the signal amplitude was much larger than where n represents the length of the signal, ci(m) stands
the case without leakage. Fig. 5 shows the acoustic signals for the mth element in the ith IMF. The energy
received by the two sensors after the leakage was stabilized. percentage of IMF components is designated as:
Spectral analysis was performed on the received signals Ei
pi = × 100%
using MATLAB and the results obtained are illustrated in E
Fig. 6. The results indicate that the amplitude of the AE (9)
signals depends on the propagation distance. The maximum Where E is the total energy of each IMF component Ei.
amplitude of the leak signals is about 500 mV. A significant
part of the AE signals generated from the leak hole Table 3 Average Energy and Energy Percentage of IMF
propagated in the frequency range of 40~60 kHz. The peak Components
energy occurred at a frequency near 50 kHz. IMF 1 2 3 4 5~8
After de-nosing the original signals through WT, the 3
Ei (10 ) 4.0693 0.0951 0.0058 0.0013 0.0025
signals may contain more than one fluctuation pattern,
EMD was used for de-noised signals to obtain Intrinsic Pi (%) 97.56 2.281 0.1391 0.0031 0.0154
mode functions. Eight IMF components and a residual
Table 3 shows the average energy and energy
component were generated, as shown in Fig. 7.
percentage of the IMF components. First two components
Fig. 7 shows that, in the time and frequency domains,
would describe the characteristics of the acoustic signals
the amplitude of the IMF decreases gradually from IMF1 to
since they contain the largest amount of the signal
IMF8. The average energy of the eight IMF components is
information.
calculated using the following equation:
By reconstructing IMF1 and IMF2 a new sequence of
1 n
Ei = ∑ (ci (m))2 the acoustic signals may be obtained. Cross-correlation was
n m=1 used to calculate the time difference between the two
(8) reconstructed signals, as shown in Fig. 8. An enlarged view
of the highlighted region is shown at the top-right corner,

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and it can be easily seen that the correlation coefficient can
reach 0.7 and the time difference between the two related
signals is 0.01 ms. The predicted leakage locations using
the two related signals from the four cases studied are
illustrated in Fig. 9. The average error in the prediction of
the leak position, i.e. at 200 mm, is less than 5% for all four
cases studied, which confirm that the locating algorithm
presented in this paper works under the conditions tests.
1
0.8
0.6
Cross-correlation function
0.4
0.2
0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
-1
-0.02 -0.016 -0.012 -0.008 -0.004
Fig. 8. Cross-Correlation of the two AE signals
120
100
80
Times
60
40
20
0
0 100
Fig. 9. Leakage location on pipe for multiple sets of signals
Due to the limited experimental conditions available,
this work only discussed the leakage localization under a
relatively low pressure of 0.5 MPa, and the situation on
high pressure of CO2 pipe will be reported in future.
5. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a method for leak detection of a CO2
pipeline based on acoustic emission signals has been
presented. Experiments were carried out on the pipe with
a circular hole located at 200 mm from the top of the
pipe. Acoustic emission signals due to the leaking CO2
were recorded using two AE sensors. By using the WT
and EMD techniques, the noise was removed and the
main AE signals were obtained. Under different sensor-
source distances, several set of tests were performed and
the mean error of the leak locating has been found be
less than 5%
The results of the location experiments have
demonstrated that the acoustic emission method is effective
for leak locating in a CO2 pipe. This work has shown
preliminary studies in a laboratory environment. Further
studies on leak location will concentrate on industrial CO2
pipeline conditions.
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6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research
Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2014XS40).
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