Leakage detection in a CO₂ pipeline using Acoustic emission techniques

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is considered to be one of the most promising options in dealing with the problem of global warming, where long distance transmission pipeline is often used for transporting captured CO₂ to the storage site. A pipe leak detection and location system is established in the present work. An Acoustic emission (AE) signal occurs when CO₂ leak takes place. The signal propagates along the pipe and can be recorded by acoustic sensors mounted on the pipe. Experimental tests were performed to identify the leak location in the pipe through wavelet transform (WT) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) of the AE signal. The relationship between the distance of two sensors and the leak location is investigated. Experimental results demonstrate that the maximum error in the estimation of the leak location is less than 5%.