Development and Analysis of a Distributed Leak Detection and Localisation System for Crude Oil Pipelines

Crude oil leakages and spills (OLS) are some of the problems attributed to pipeline failures in the oil and gas industry’s midstream sector. Consequently, they are monitored via several leakage detection and localisation techniques (LDTs) comprising classical methods and, recently, Internet of Things (IoT)-based systems via wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Although the latter techniques are proven to be more efficient, they are susceptible to other types of failures such as high false alarms or single point of failure (SPOF) due to their centralised implementations. Therefore, in this work, we present a hybrid distributed leakage detection and localisation technique (HyDiLLEch), which combines multiple classical LDTs. The technique is implemented in two versions, a single-hop and a double-hop version. The evaluation of the results is based on the resilience to SPOFs, the accuracy of detection and localisation, and communication efficiency. The results obtained from the placement strategy and the distributed spatial data correlation include increased sensitivity to leakage detection and localisation and the elimination of the SPOF related to the centralised LDTs by increasing the number of node-detecting and localising (NDL) leakages to four and six in the single-hop and double-hop versions, respectively. In addition, the accuracy of leakages is improved from 0 to 32 m in nodes that were physically close to the leakage points while keeping the communication overhead minimal.