Project/Technology Description:
The project demonstrated the effectiveness of a cleaning tool consisting of an array of brushes mounted on the commercial EXP robot, which is used to conduct in-line inspections of live, unpiggable natural gas pipelines. Cleaning is performed by both light scraping of the tool's brushes on the pipe wall and by "jetting" with the gas flow serving to carry the debris downstream to a diverter assembly that directs the dirt contaminated gas stream through a coalescing filtration system. The clean filtered gas then flows back through the diverter assembly into the pipe. The removed debris consists of metal shavings created by tapping the gas main. The device is in a commercialization stage with Invodane.