28 Jan 2020
Company News Permalink

West Warren-Viola Utility District Adds Electro Scan to Upgrade Sewer Condition Assessment for 10-Mile Sewer System

January 28, 2020

Tennessee Sewer District Adopts Machine-Intelligent Focused Electrode Leak Location (FELL) to Automatically Locate and Quantify Pipe Defects

West Warren map location
West Warren-Viola Utility District provides sewer to the Town of Morrison, Mountain View Industrial Park, commercial developments along the Highway 55 corridor, and a large residential neighborhood near the McMinnville Country Club.

January 28, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ — Electro Scan Inc. announced today that West Warren-Viola Utility District (District), Morrison, Tennessee, has added the Company’s machine-intelligent Focused Electrode Leak Location (FELL) technology to the District’s current field inspection fleet. The Company’s patented ES-620 for Sewer Mains and ES-38 for Sewer Laterals will be purchased and operated by the District.

The District operates and maintains over 50,000 feet, or 10 miles, of sewer collection mains ranging from 8- to 12-inches in diameter. The District treats nearly 1 million gallons of wastewater per day, which increases dramatically during wet weather events due to leaking pipes in its existing system.

Electro Scan Products

FELL technology automatically locates and quantifies defects in minutes, without the need for third party data processing or evaluation and does not require manual coding by field operators. Electro Scan technology will be used to locate leaks contributing to unwanted infiltration and to prioritize pipes for rehabilitation within the District’s sewer system.

“We want to get our moratorium lifted on adding new sewer connections and this will go a long way to pinpoint our largest sources of infiltration,” stated Tim Pelham, General Manager, WWVUD.

According to the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems, there are nearly 15,000 Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs) in the United States that treat wastewater from 1.2 million miles of collection sewers. These systems serve almost 250 million people and adopting FELL technology overcomes many of the drawbacks from legacy assessment techniques to accurately find and measure leaking pipes. As a result, wastewater agencies can target their limited capital to where it is needed the most. ‘Doing more with less’ while serving the needs of rate payers everywhere.

“Whether you are responsible for 10 miles of pipe or 10,000 miles of pipe, accurate condition assessments & unbiased testing of repairs, rehabilitation, and replacement projects need to be performed one-pipe at a time,” stated Chuck Hansen, CEO and Founder, Electro Scan Inc.

Consulting engineers from James C. Hailey & Company (Brentwood, TN) assisted the District in its evaluation and purchase of the equipment and had invited the Electro Scan field team to demonstrate its technology for the District in its own collection network.

Clay Pipe Image
While CCTV cannot assess bell & spigot conditions or open-ended joints, FELL provides an unbiased quantitative assessment of potential defect flow.

“Agencies like West Warren-Viola Utility District can’t afford to miss-prioritize repairs & rehabilitation,” stated Nathaniel Green, P.E., Principal, James C. Hailey &. Company. “And, even the best cameras that rely on visual inspection can’t correctly assess most pipes.”

“CCTV, at best, can be hit-or-miss at finding infiltration,” stated Green. “The District had received USDA funding to help eliminate major sources of infiltration, and we wanted Electro Scan to show us what we couldn’t find using CCTV cameras.”

Rehabilitation selections will be based on FELL results with construction funding provided from a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Loan / Grant combination.

FELL inspection will also be used to test and certify rehabilitation work to determine if Contractors have delivered watertight pipes that conform to contract requirements.

“During the field demonstration, the Electro Scan Services team evaluated two (2) pipe materials, and not only confirmed what we saw using a CCTV camera but found pinhole leaks in PVC that couldn’t be seen. In the RCP, Electro Scan measured leaks at known bad joints, but also located corrosion and bad joints that looked good on CCTV,” stated Mark Parker, Wastewater Superintendent, WWVUD.

Four (4) pipes were selected as a demonstration to compare FELL results with manually coded data from legacy CCTV inspection, including three (3) 8-inch reinforced concrete (RC) pipes and one (1) 8-inch polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe. The reinforced concrete pipes proved to have moderate corrosion with large defects each joint that were not previously seen using CCTV inspection.

The demonstration was organized by Tim Kazmier, Kazmier & Associates (Lenior, TN), the exclusive representative of Electro Scan products & services in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee.

“CCTV and FELL results were compared, showing that CCTV was lacking in locating and measuring potential infiltration.” stated Parker. “We realized this technology could take our condition assessment programs to the next level with its ability to estimate leaks in gallons per minute.”

While CCTV pipe inspection had been used by the District for decades, as with many other agencies, and will continue to be used to help document obstructions, accumulated fats, oils, grease, and roots, FELL technology is needed to correctly locate and measure pipe leaks to pinpoint needed repairs, and certify rehabilitation and new pipe installations as watertight.

CIPP defects with CCTV
Leakage in poorly installed or inadequately cured CIPP, missed by CCTV, is found & measured by FELL, including leaks at bad lateral reinstatements.

A key advantage of FELL technology is its ability to automatically identify and quantify leaks at joints, customer lateral connections, and cracks, without subjective or third-party analysis or specialized training.

The technology can also identify pinhole leaks from trenchless rehabilitation projects, including Cured-In-Place Pipe (CIPP), as well as defects at customer lateral locations that may not have been present before lining or lateral reinstatement.

The ES-620 equipment will be seamlessly integrated into the District’s existing Cues CCTV truck, allowing the operators to easily switch between FELL and CCTV inspection methods within minutes.

Electro Scan’s FELL technology has been evaluated in benchmark studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), and the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WERF). Likewise, the German Institute of Underground Infrastructure (IKT), the UK-based Water Research Centre (WRc), and the Japanese Sewer Collection System Maintenance Association (JASCOMA) have all studied and endorsed FELL technology for pipeline condition inspection.

Uncontrolled inflow and infiltration (I/I) in gravity sewers results in significant and unnecessary costs to the District and its rate payers.

By precisely identifying and quantifying I/I within the District’s pipelines, infrastructure integrity is improved maximizing system capacity and avoiding costly and unnecessary capital expenditures.

Electro Scan is the only supplier, worldwide, that produces reporting in accordance with ASTM F2550, ‘Standard Practice for Locating Leaks in Sewer Pipes by Measuring the Variation of Electric Current Flow Through the Pipe Wall.’

“West Warren-Viola Utility District may be a small agency, but the importance of reducing flows due to unwanted infiltration and making cost-effective rehabilitation decisions is the same for every utility,” stated Mike App, Vice President, Electro Scan Inc.

ABOUT WEST WARREN-VIOLA UTILITY DISTRICT
The District provides sewer services to the Town of Morrison, Mountain View Industrial Park, commercial developments along the Highway 55 corridor, and a large residential neighborhood near the McMinnville Country Club. Created pursuant to Order of the County Executive of Warren County, Tennessee, entered on June 9, 1982, the District resulted from the merger of the West Warren Utility District of Warren County, Tennessee, and the Viola Utility District of Warren County. Following an Order Granting Petition in 2008, the District was granted approval for West-Warren Viola Utility District to expand its boundaries into Coffee County, recreating the District as a two (2) county utility district.

ABOUT ELECTRO SCAN INC.
Electro Scan Inc., a leading supplier of machine-intelligent pipeline assessment products and services for the water & wastewater pipeline market, was named to Government Technology’s esteemed 2020 GovTech 100 list for the second year in a row. Electro Scan Inc. develops proprietary pipe condition assessment equipment, delivers field services, and offers cloud-based data processing and reporting applications that automatically locate, measure, and report defects in sewer, water, and natural gas pipelines, typically not found by legacy inspection methods.

Contact Us
30 Aug 2019
In The Press Permalink

Software enhancements locate pinhole leaks in CIPP

August 30, 2019

SOURCE: Trenchless International

Electro Scan Inc. has released new software enhancements that aim to locate and measure pinhole leaks in cured-in-place pipe (CIPP).

Electro Scan Inc. has announced its release of major software enhancements to locate and measure leaks in CIPP liners, alongside other trenchless rehabilitation solutions.

The software is available immediately for both imperial and metric customers, and applies to all forms of CIPP liners, including thermal, steam, ultraviolet and light-emitting diode – LED – cured liners.

The technology, namely the focused electrode leak location (FELL) technology, will deliver unbiased and unambiguous results to help prevent decay of infrastructure.

With the new technology, leaks will be quantified in either gal/m or L/s.

“Traditional inspection methods including acoustic and CCTV inspection are unable to identify or measure leaks,” said Electro Scan Vice President Mike App.

FELL’s solution can bring the required accuracy to determine when a liner is watertight and is recommended to certify both gravity and pressurised pipelines for watertightness.

Once a FELL survey is completed, the data can be transmitted, stored and processed through the company’s Critical Sewers® cloud application, with licensing available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis.

In terms of testing the watertightness of CIPP liners, Electro Scan offers the only technology in compliance with the ASTM F2550 and AWWA M77 standards.

The new technology was developed after the importance to quantify leaks was recognised while Electro Scan was working on a CIPP research project for German-based IKT.

The new software release also helps locate and measure small defects in other materials, such as plastic pipes.

For more information visit the Electro Scan Inc. website.

If you have news you would like featured in Trenchless International contact Managing Editor Chloe Jenkins at cjenkins@gs-press.com.au

SOURCE: Trenchless International
19 Aug 2019
In The Press Permalink

Electro Scan Guides US Utilities Towards Increased Wastewater Security

August 19, 2019

SOURCE: Global Water Intel
https://www.globalwaterintel.com

2019 has seen Electro Scan’s in-pipe leak detection alternative to CCTV move into the mainstream as US utilities look to secure their wastewater networks. Has the California firm found a niche that others have missed?

Two deals signed with utilities in Florida and Missouri in July 2019 further propelled Electro Scan’s electrode-based leak detection solution into the US municipal market as traditional pipe inspection methods fall short of tackling sewer network infiltration and leaks.

“Municipalities are spending billions of dollars dealing with the effects of sewer faults,” Mike App, Electro Scan’s vice president told GWI. “Many, such as the City of Kansas City, Missouri, initially deployed CCTV or dye and smoke-based methods for primary leak detection. Those methods don’t provide the intelligence they need to make really targeted investment decisions so now they’re looking to us for something different.”

Despite securing its first commercial deployments back in 2016 in Japan, the UAE and Germany, Electro Scan has struggled for traction in its domestic market. This has changed in recent months, and the firm now has active projects with more than 20 municipalities across the United States, including major projects in San Antonio, Texas, and now Tampa, Florida, and Kansas City. “These are tent pole municipalities,” App explained. “Having them bring us on board – in the case of Kansas City, with the expressed target of reducing their spending by $1 billion – is huge for us.”

The City of Kansas City is currently subject to an EPA consent decree to reduce pollutant infiltration into separate sewer systems and minimize both the frequency and volume of CSO events. Andy Shively, the city’s special assistant city manager, recognizes there is still work to be done, with the utility looking for ways to improve its compliance. “Traditional methods could identify defects but needed visual inspection to determine their intensity. Electro Scan’s technology allows us to pinpoint defect locations and measure sources of infiltration in gallons per minute, eliminating the need for follow-up inspections.” Following on from a 2017 pilot, Electro Scan’s technology will be used to survey 35km of Kansas City’s wastewater network as part of the city’s $4.5 billion 25-year ‘Smart Sewer’ program, providing a technology-as-a-service licensing agreement while a national contractor completes the field work.

Electro Scan’s Focused Electrode Leak Location (FELL) solution involves passing a probe through a customer’s network, connected to a deployment support vehicle by a cable around 1000m in length. The probe emits a 60-milliamp current into the water, producing a one kilohertz signal distinct from that emitted by anything else in the ground, minimizing the chances of false positives. “If there’s a breach in the pipe, the electricity escapes with the water,” App explained. “It completes the circuit through a grounding rod attached to the support vehicle. We then measure the intensity and duration of the signal and score it relative to all the other faults we find, prioritizing points of interest. Other methods can’t do that. CCTV can’t tell if cracks propagate through the pipe and misses around 80% of the faults we find.”

An in-house developed, cloud-based analytics system then processes the results of the scan in real-time, reporting fault location and intensity, and generating automated maintenance guidance for operators. Currently used only for wastewater, the solution is already optimized for use in potable water networks and once certified for deployment – with global approval expected in 2020 – Electro Scan will pursue that market.

THE MORE YOU KNOW
The FELL solution has the ability to simultaneously describe leak location to within 1cm as well as intensity in litres per second, helping users target maintenance investment with increased volumes of accurate data. In the case shown here, a US utility projected 80% leak reduction with $12m investment guided by conventional technology. In practice, the project yielded <30% improvement. A FELL survey suggested their money would have been better spent elsewhere.

GWI - Electro Scan - FELL

Electro Scan has been developing its system since 2011 when company founder, Chuck Hansen, took up the rights to the underlying technology. “We added cloud-based analytics the following year, and in 2013, the EPA started studying it,” App explained. “We began being included in consent decrees as a secondary verified methodology to determine leaks in pipes in 2014.”

To date, Electro Scan’s customers have been almost exclusively municipal, with 70% of the firm’s business coming in the form of service deployments, with Electro Scan’s technicians completing surveys and providing clients with network assessments to guide maintenance. The remaining 30% of business comes in the form of equipment sales.

App hopes recent contract successes will now see Electro Scan kick on. “In the first half of 2019, our solution identified almost 21,000 leaks with a combined loss potential of around 300,000m3 per day,” he told GWI. “With the projects in Kanas City and Tampa launching in July, this year is a water shed moment where FELL and Electro Scan achieved market acceptance. We can only grow from here.”

Global Water Intelligence
https://www.globalwaterintel.com