Pipeline op­er­a­tors have long iden­ti­fied pin­hole and es­pe­cially em­bed­ded pin­hole de­fects as a sig­nif­i­cant risk fac­tor in their in­tegrity man­age­ment pro­grams. NDT Global, a leading supplier of ultrasonic pipeline inspection and pipeline integrity management services, announced that it is now offering a high resolution pinhole and pitting (UMp) metal loss inspection service to help operators mitigate such risks.

The UMp ser­vice re­li­ably de­tects de­fects and sizes as small as 5 mm (0.2 inch) which rep­re­sents a two-fold im­prove­ment in the min­i­mum siz­ing thresh­old, from the pre­vi­ous entry level ul­tra­sonic ser­vice of 10 mm (0.4 inch), and it will be a standard offering in all of NDT's global markets.

While many in­line in­spec­tion (ILI) providers still offer cor­ro­sion in­spec­tions these are with­out the res­o­lu­tion re­quired to de­tect and size pin­hole de­fects, with some ul­tra­sonic ser­vices only re­li­ably de­tect­ing fea­tures greater than 10 mm (0.4 inch) and siz­ing fea­tures greater than 20 mm (0.8 inch). Higher res­o­lu­tion in­spec­tion of fea­tures iden­ti­fies the true deep­est point of a pin­hole mor­phol­ogy within a larger area of cor­ro­sion with an over­all shal­lower depth.