| Project Detail |
Legacy pipe malfunctions create operating risk and legal liability for utilities, negatively impact system owners’ financial performance, and are costly to gas consumers. Today, repairing legacy pipes involves excavating and replacing them, typically with high-density polyethylene pipe. Replacement costs range from $1-10 million per mile, depending on the pipe’s location (rural vs. urban), complexity of the excavation, and costs for restoring roads. Utilities also incur costs whenever gas service is disrupted for repairs. REPAIR seeks to eliminate the highest cost components, excavation and restoration, by rehabilitating pipes without their removal—in essence, by automatically constructing a new pipe within the old.
Project Innovation + Advantages:
General Electric (GE) Global Research will develop PipeLine Underground Trenchless Overhaul (PLUTO)—a long-distance, minimally invasive pipe repair system that provides structural rehabilitation of gas pipelines faster, more efficiently, and less expensively than traditional open-cut excavation replacement. The GE team, including Warren Environmental and Garver, will develop and integrate a highly dexterous long-range pipe-crawling (robotic) system, high-speed non-destructive evaluation technologies, and advanced spray-on thick-coating epoxy lining systems. The PLUTO system will provide efficient pipeline maintenance at ½ to 1/20th the cost of traditional open-trench methods, a key enabler to lower emissions by reducing pipeline transit loss and maintenance burdens. |
