Posted: 26 Nov 2012
Atmos International has recently upgraded the Atmos Pipe leak detection system (LDS) at RRP (Rotterdam-Rijn Pijpleiding Mij N.V., The Netherlands) after 12 years of successful operation with the system. The data scan rate is being increased and some new requirements for LDS redundancy were set. The system provides fully redundant leak detection for 3 pipelines and now runs the latest SMT version of Atmos Pipe 5 which in addition to leak detection has full redundancy management and runs as a service. The new version is fully compatible with all current versions of Microsoft operating systems and the latest versions of SQL.
RRP transports crude oil from Europoort in Rotterdam, the Netherlands to four refineries in Germany. The crude oil has a wide range of viscosity and density properties from North Sea light to Middle-Eastern heavy oil. Atmos Pipe works effectively with all the crude oil types using its powerful statistical analysis software.
The previous version of Atmos Pipe was installed in 1999 and has worked reliably since then with the continuous support from Atmos. Atmos guarantees support of all the installed real-time systems for their full life and continues to support the older systems if the customer does not wish to upgrade. This minimizes the operational expenditure for the client and means lower cost of ownership for Atmos Pipe.
Both the old system and the new system were tested during the site acceptance tests (SATs) after the upgrade at RRP and both systems successfully detected all leaks. The detection time of the new system was approximately 40% faster due to improvements in the system and the faster scan rate. Even after 12 years, the old system was still detecting leaks reliably.