Application of acoustic sensing technology in the leakage detection of multiphase flow pipeline

Offshore oil and gas are mainly collected and transported through multiphase flow pipelines, and the detection of multiphase flow pipelines has always been the difficulty of pipeline safety management. For the acoustic sensing technology has many advantages, its application in the leakage detection of multiphase flow pipelines was investigated in this paper. First, the status of pipeline leakage detection by means of acoustic sensing technology was summarized. Then, the feasibility of acoustic sensing technology to detect the leakage of multiphase flow pipeline was verified by performing cognition experiments based on acoustic method for leakage detection of gas-liquid two-phase flow pipeline and processing preliminarily the experimental data acquired by acoustic sensor. It is shown that the characteristics of acquired leakage acoustic signals are different under different flow regimes, but they all have the characteristics of the first peak and the second peak. Whether a pipeline is leaked can be discriminated by calculating average amplitude, mean square value and sectional integral of signals. And the leakage can be located by the cross correlation of signals. Based on the above research, the research and development directions of acoustic sensing technology for multiphase flow pipeline detection were discussed.