Research on Detection of Heated Pipelines Underground by Infrared Imaging

Abstract

The oil in the pipelines must be heated to a certain temperature in some oil fields in north of China. Otherwise, the oil will freeze because of much paraffin mixed in it. A method to detect the direction of the pipeline underground accurately is described in the paper. The temperature of the pipelines can conduct to the surface of the soil and be detected by an uncooled focal plane arrays (UFPA) sensor. The output of the thermal infrared sensor can be expressed as the gray thermal pictures. According to the different degree of gray in the thermal pictures, the temperature distribution of the soil surface can be obtained, and then the direction of the pipelines underground can be judged. The advantage of the method is simple operation, direct display and harmless to human and the environment.

Keywords

• Pipeline
• Non-destructive testing
• Infrared imaging
• Uncooled focal plane arrays.