Monitoring in a harsh environment

Norway´s largest industrial project ever, is the development of natural gas extraction in Ormen Lange, which required a condition pipeline monitoring system to monitor the enormous pipeline due to the extreme subsea conditions. With a project the size of the Ormen Lange and involving tight time lines and rugged conditions, innovative approaches were required to solve the engineering challenges. Through NAXYS technology Bjorge AS was able e these challenges by reusing off the shelf hardware based on a Blacklfin Processor by analog devices and applying graphical programming to generate the code required to deploy to this low-power embedded target. The LabVIEW Embedded Module helped to shorten development time and ensured parallel operation and complex interrupt handling demanded for this application. The oil and gas market now gains from a solution that allows synchronised measuring between ´n´ nodes over distances far longer than 100 metres with high accuracy. The wireless acoustic communication, in-node data analysis and storage along with a smart power scheme allows the lowest power consumption and ensures continuous detection and handling of critical static and dynamic motions. Thanks to acoustic links, critical data can be sent directly to the engineer´s desk. This provides new possibilities within all kinds of synchronised vibration monitoring.