METHOD FOR DETECTING ILLEGAL TAPPING IN PIPELINE Russian patent published in 2019 - IPC F17D5/00 

FIELD: transportation; piping systems; pipelines.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to the field of pipeline transportation and can be used to locate illegal tapping of pipeline. Essence of the invention lies in the fact that at each end of the controlled section of the pipeline is installed on the acoustic transducer. Sound-proof casing is installed on each acoustic transducer. Synchronous fixation of acoustic transducers of acoustic signals is carried out. Recorded acoustic signals are filtered to extract signals in the frequency range of 10–2,000 Hz. Obtained data is divided into equal time intervals. For each time interval, the signals obtained from two acoustic transducers are cross-correlated. Comparison of the data obtained for each time interval is carried out. Presence of illegal tapping is determined by the amplitude value and the shape of the bursts obtained from the results of the mutual correlation of signals. Location of the illegal tapping is determined by the speed of propagation of acoustic signals in the transported medium and the propagation time of acoustic signals from the source of acoustic signals to acoustic transducers. Proposed method allows to quickly work to identify illegal tapping with a high degree of reliability and low material costs.

EFFECT: search for illegal tapping by the proposed method can be carried out on almost any pipelines.

1 cl, 3 dwg