Storage tank wall scanning

[carthago]

We need to do some inspection.work on a couple of existing API 650 storage tanks.

Doing hand measurements is time consuming and endless...

Do you you good names and adresses of companies selling these automatic crawlers with probes for scanning and mapping tank wall thicknesses.

We are interested in companies who can provide training and assistance..

Thanks a lot for your help

 

[MrMyers]

Hi,

Do you want to measure thickness only? or send in a probe to measure things like local out of roundness or slightly warped wall plates to feed in to a numerical model for later analysis?

 

[carthago]

We want to measure thicknesses in order to create a sort of profile thickness ..and assess their acceptability or repair,.. (FFS).

Reason= loss of material, corrosion.

I am talking about the tank shells, especially the lower ones.



Doing the survey entirely by hand is time consuming.
We think that scanning is quicker and also more reliable.


Of course we can r-check some point by a classic portable
Krautkramer or similar..

I wonder wher we can buy such scanners ??
I assume, that for a certain corroded area, when scanned we can get the average thickness and the minimum one ? correct ?

 

[MrMyers]

Is the corrosion internal from the contained fluid or external CUI?

Where are you located?

 

[carthago]

External (cui)

located in Europe ( France , Netherlands.

 

[ndeguy]

Try the major NDT equipment manufacturing companies, General Electric Inspection Technologies (GEIT) and Olympus.

Here is a link to a smaller UK-based outfit which makes tank inspection equipment, including magnetic UT wall-crawlers:

http://www.silverwinguk.com/

Google "NDT storage tank" and you'll get a lot of response.


Nigel Armstrong
Karachaganak Petroleum
Kazakhstan

 

[chicopee]

What's wrong with API 653 chapter#6 complemented with NBIC? Good inspection work takes times. You are not dealing with "drive by" inspections.

 

[MrMyers]

I've seen some UT scanning gear which is essentially a thickness probe with a small point light source pointing away from the wall - some distance behind the operator is a camera which detects the XY coordinates of that point source.

This allows the operator to scan a large area and 'colour in' the entire area of interest to generate a 'corrosion map' ensuring he/she hasn't missed a patch.

I don't know the exact maximum area each scan can traverse, possibly 1m^2?

 

[carthago]

MrMyers,
Could you please send sites or names of suppliers of the system you have described.
Thanks

 

[MrMyers]

The group I have seen are in Indonesia, a reasonably small crowd. I understand the technology is quite common (in it's various forms. A quick google search for "ultrasonic corrosion scanning" yields suitable results, including this one:

http://www.oceaneering.com/Brochures/INS - Ultrasonic Corrosion Mapping.pdf

who indicate they can do 15 square m in a shift and will provide some sexy visualisation tools.

Best of luck.