Experimental Study on a New Leak Location Method for Gas Pipelines Based on Acoustic Waves

Natural gas is a vital energy carrier to reduce the CO₂ emissions, which is extremely vulnerable to leakages from pipeline transportation systems. Natural gas leaks are the largest anthropogenic source of the greenhouse gas methane in the United States and the second largest source globally. Also, the pipeline transportation is important component for carbon capture, utilization, storage (CCUS) and some pipelines are used for CO₂ transportation by gas, in which leakages occur occasionally. Pipeline safety has increased in recent decades, but incidents involving natural gas pipelines still cause property damage annually. To reduce leakage and increase consumer safety, leak detection and location method based on acoustic waves is proposed and researched in experiments. The researches preparations are made clear, including signal processing methods and propagation law. Firstly, the leakage signals measured by field experiments are processed by wavelet transform and Hilbert-Huang transform. Then experimental facility in laboratory scale is established and experiments are carried out. Thirdly, the propagation law including velocity equation and propagation model is concluded. Finally, the preparations are verified and applied for the leak location. The results show that the researches can provide foundation for the proposed method. The maximum experimental leak location errors for two methods are -1.421% and 2.653%. Also, the method can be applied for other gas pipelines including CO₂. Conclusions can be drawn that the new methods can be applied to protect and monitor gas pipelines.