Revalidation, upgrading and rehabilitation of pipelines
CEPS expertise enables us to provide a complete package of services enabling our customers to significantly extend the period of safe and reliable operation of their high pressure steel pipelines, to improve and verify the actual level of safety and reliability, to re-confirm the integrity and design factor after a long period of pipeline operation or even to increase the maximum allowed operation pressure in order to increase the transport capacity.
Hydrostatic retesting of existing pipelines allows revalidation and upgrading and verifying the pipeline strength needed for its future safe and reliable operation at the specified MAOP.
CEPS provides
- Mechanical and metallographic testing of steel samples taken from the pipeline
- Hydrostatic testing, cyclic pressure load tests, burst tests on test vessels manufactured from pipe spools taken from the pipeline to verify that target operating pressure level complies with the required MAOP and to simulate a desired future pipeline lifetime
- Safe and reliable implementation of the testing program on the pipeline
- Engineering studies based on the existing pipeline data, the pipeline material examination and experimental work on test vessels
- Pipeline upgrading project management to increase the MAOP above its originally specified level
- Pipeline rehabilitation project management
During hydrostatic tests of many old pipelines, it is possible to achieve test pressures loading the pipeline steel to the level of yield stress without consuming the elasticity of the steel.
Such a tests accurately determine the actual pipeline state
- critical defects burst and are repaired,
- subcritical fatigue cracks are blocked (CRACK BLUNTING),
- stress concentrators removed, and
- areas with reduced WT like general corrosion spots are re-shaped that results in better resistance to fatigue process.
The achieved cost saving on such projects is enormous.