This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Read our privacy policy
Inspecting the pipelines that carry oil and gas over thousands of km has been a monumental task frought with error - until now.
By Zheng Kai, tech journalist
While sensing technologies deployed on oil and gas pipelines aren’t new, they tend to be plagued by issues such as false positives, false negatives, and misidentification. Huawei has taken the optical technologies it uses in fiber communications and applied fiber sensing, resulting in the Huawei OptiXsense EF3000 — Huawei's first intelligent optical sensing product.
Petroleum is one of the most important economic resources in the world today. However, uneven geographical distribution and the physical properties of petroleum mean that transporting the resource to where it’s needed presents a tough logistical challenge.
Oil and gas are typically transported by rail, road, water, air, or pipelines. Of these, pipes are the least restrictive method. However, inspections are notoriously difficult on pipe networks that can traverse tens of thousands of kilometers. A 200-km to 300-km stretch of pipeline typically requires a dedicated team of three inspectors in one vehicle, assuming navigable terrain free of obstacles like reservoirs, lakes, forests, and steep slopes.
At HUAWEI CONNECT 2021, David Wang, Executive Director of the Board and President of ICT Products & Solutions, said that digital infrastructure of the future would need to be hyper secure, reliable, and deterministic, as well as equipped with efficient data circulation and computing power capabilities. Huawei has taken the optical technologies that it usually uses in fiber communications, applied them to fiber sensing, and built the Huawei OptiXsense EF3000, Huawei's first intelligent optical sensing product.