Implementation of a Cost Effective Gas Pipeline Monitoring System for Water Ingress Detection

In Singapore, most of the pipelines are made of ductile iron, which develops leaks over time that leads to water ingress. Water ingress in low-pressure gas pipelines is a serious problem that can lead to catastrophic consequences. Hence, timely detection of water ingress is important to avert danger. A vibration sensor based detection technique is employed to detect three kinds of anomalies in this paper, which are, individual knock, multiple knocks and water ingress. The paper outlines the development of a wireless pipeline monitoring system at a fraction of the cost of conventional systems to detect water ingress in the gas distribution network. Various IoT technologies such as Bluetooth 5.0, XBee and Sigfox are compared to find the optimal solution in terms of ease of use, device specification and cost of setup.