Oil & gas vessel inspection

Customer need in oil & gas vessel inspection

A LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) company needs to inspect some oil separator vessels and various tanks on one of their main LNG plant. There are manholes but they want to avoid any man entry into confined space. Some nozzles have been identified but they are 50 mm to 100 mm diameter. Vessels and tanks size vary and are up to 10 m high and 5m diameter.

Inspection purpose is to check presence of any foreign object, state of internal surfaces, presence of corrosion and welds conditions.

Challenge in LNG plant

There are two challenges :

1. To find a compact enough camera for smallest nozzles (50mm)
2. While having sufficient lighting for the bigger vessels.

Solution for oil & gas vessel inspection

The combination of Visioprobe 45mm diameter camera with LED centering (94mm) proved to be the right solution. Used vertically with flexible cable, those two elements allowed for high image quality inspection in the smaller vessels (45mm camera only) as well as biggest ones (45mm camera + the LED centering device with its extreme light output).

Result of a vessel inspection

All inspections could be performed in a timely manner with the same range of products. The image quality was excellent in all conditions and allowed for a complete check of asset integrity.

The product ease of use and its robustness also meant that several operators teams could share one equipement with no damage and no additional training. The product was bought by the LNG plant operator and its specifications were also shared with all inspection companies involved on the plant.