ABSTRACT
Although pipelines are designed and constructed to maintain their integrity, it is difficult to prevent the incidence of leakage in a pipeline system during its lifetime. Leakage from pipelines has the potential to cause major environmental damage and financial losses. Leak detection in transmission or distribution pipelines is important for the safe operation of pipelines.
The main aim of leak detection is to help pipeline operators to detect and localize leaks. The probability of leaks may occur at any time and location; therefore, pipeline leak detection systems play a key role in the minimization of the probability of occurrence of leaks and hence their impacts.
Currently, there are many leak detection technologies (e.g. computational pipeline monitoring, acoustic emission systems, radioactive tracing, liquid sensing, and vapor sensing, and with some internal methods based on flow and pressure measurements in the pipeline, volume or mass balance method, pressure wave detection method, and analytical method). This chapter provides an overview on external- and internal-based leak detection methods as well as a summary of some leak detection techniques.
