An inspection provider for the oil and gas industry has created a new subsea tool for inspecting caissons, which is five times faster than existing techniques.
Aberdeen headquartered, Innospection designed and developed the MEC-Combi Pipecrawler which is the first of its kind to use two types of subsea inspecting methods simultaneously for the external inspection of Caissons, to support ensuring their integrity.
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The scanner collects both UT (Ultrasonic) and MEC (Magnetic Eddy Current) data, as well as close visual data and uses rotatable wheels in the design which pivot 90 degrees on its axis, so it can seamlessly overlap scans of the entire caisson circumference.
By collecting two different sets of inspection data within the same deployment it dramatically saves time and cost, requires little or no cleaning, as well as providing more accurate than ever information about the assets condition.
Innospection have successfully completed the inspection of two caissons for an Operator in the North Sea using the new technology. The Operator needed high density mapping data for the integrity assessment of the caissons and Innospection’s tool was able to provide it in record time.
Andreas Boenisch, Managing Director said: “The combination of the two techniques in our new tool, to inspect caissons externally is a solution which provides the highest quality and accuracy of data, with minimal disruption to operations for our clients.
“Previously many caisson inspecting techniques have only spot checked the circumference and therefore not fully shown the state of the caissons. This technique shows in detail any localized corrosion and wall thickness to allow the operator to maintain caissons integrity to the highest standards.”
