DETECTION OF UNAUTHORIZED CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT IN PIPELINE RIGHT-OF-WAYS

Natural gas transmission companies mark the right-of-way areas where pipelines are buried with warning signs to prevent accidental third-party damage. Nevertheless, pipelines are sometimes damaged by third-party construction equipment. A single incident can be devastating, causing death and millions of dollars of property loss. This damage would be prevented if potentially hazardous construction equipment could be detected, identified, and an alert given before the pipeline was damaged. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a system to solve this problem by using an optical fiber as a distributed sensor and interrogating the fiber with a custom optical time domain reflectometer. Key issues are the ability to detect encroachment and the ability to discriminate among potentially hazardous and benign encroachments. The work performed in the third quarter of the project (2nd quarter of 2002) includes design and construction of the diode laser driver and high-speed detector electronics. Fine-tuning of the electronics is proceeding. A new test site along an operating pipeline has been obtained