Contributor James Walker is the product line leader of GE Oil & Gas’ Smartlaunch.

Winding below Brooklyn, New York is a two-mile long, 24-inch gas pipeline that snakes under an East River tributary and into Queens to power local homes and businesses. Decades old, this pipeline wasn’t equipped with modern access features, and up until recently, it was thought that pipelines such as this one could not be thoroughly inspected at all. Enter the SmartScan “pigs,” which are a part of one of GE’s innovative inspection systems that are helping to preserve the integrity of our underground infrastructure.

Possibly named after an ancient Roman technique for cleaning pipes, GE’s “pigs” are currently serving to accurately and consistently identify and size anomalies in oil and gas pipelines worldwide. This is especially important given that many U.S. cities have “unpiggable” gas pipelines that are operating many years beyond their original design life.

Inspecting the Brooklyn pipeline posed a particularly daunting logistical challenge. Commissioned by National Grid USA, GE was tasked with completing a major inspection on this aged pipeline without major disruption to customers while at the same time avoiding extensive excavation in a densely constructed area. To accommodate these challenges, GE has developed the SmartLaunch system, to complete the SmartScan suite of technologies, designed to inspect a significant portion of the approximately 33% of the world’s pipelines previously thought to be “unpiggable.”

* Read a case study about how we did it
* Read GE’s recent announcement about the Brooklyn project
* Read “Working hard to keep oil where it belongs”