Denso^™ Keeps the Oil Flowing

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Project Data

Project Details

A typical maintenance operation on Pembina Pipeline’s NPS 20 Line in Northern Alberta.

Pipeline maintenance is part of daily life in Western Canada as it is in many different parts of the planet, although in Western Canada the sheer number of buried pipelines and an aging infrastructure makes it a thriving industry.

A very common scene throughout the Canadian Prairies is a crew huddled around an exposed pipe, removing the existing coating, inspecting for anomalies, reinforcing the pipeline back to its original strength and then recoating it.

This whole process is performed quite often for in-service lines so that the delivery of the product is not interrupted. Also, much of this type of work is done in our winter months, which affects the operating temperature of the pipeline and hence affects the coating selection for the recoat.

Denso Protal 7125^™ and the Denso^™ Interface Coating System are widely used in pipeline maintenance because these products can essentially be applied to cold pipe, down to minus 20 Celsius for the 7125 and potentially colder for the Interface Coating System which is comprised of Denso Paste^™, Denso LT^™ Tape, (possibly Denso Profiling Mastic^™) and Denso Glass Outerwrap^™.

After non-destructive testing or NDE is performed on the exposed sections of the pipe where it has been identified to have been compromised, a steel sleeve is installed on the pipeline (see figure 1), recoated with the Denso coatings (see figure 2) and ultimately buried again. The Protal 7125 is applied to the entire bare steel surface and the Denso Interface Coating System ties the newly applied Denso Protal 7125 back into the existing line coating which in this case is PE (see figure 3).

Many times in these situations Denso representation is called for on-site to ensure that the coatings are being properly installed because it is just too costly if they are improperly applied. More often these dig sites are in locations that are remote and hence very expensive to access, so everything has to be done correctly the first time.

Pipeline maintenance is a growing concern in Canada and using Denso coating products becomes essential to the integrity programs of all major pipeline companies in Canada.