Our experts take a deep dive into clean water leakage

Leakage in the clean water network has been accepted for many years as a necessary consequence of transporting pressurized water through networks. Background leaks are not typically considered an emergency, but clean water leaks still have the potential to cause significant disruption.

The high pressure in clean water pipes makes the effect of leakage worse, as small leaks can turn into large leaks and cause an interruption in the supply of water to customers. We interviewed Business Development Director for water Martin Duff and Sales and Senior Research Engineer Harry Smith, who answered some of the key questions we get asked around clean water, including:

A photo of Business Development Director for water Martin Duff and Sales and Senior Research Engineer Harry Smith

Question 1: How mature is the water leakage detection market compared to the oil and gas market?

The oil and gas market is very mature. The technology revolves around finding new leaks as they form because no leakage is permissible. The consequences of a leak in an oil or gas pipeline can be severe and there’s been legislation in place for a long time.

If we look at the water industry, leakage is an acceptable practice because it's an associated byproduct of removing water under pressure around the network.

It’s been a regulatory requirement to reduce leakage in the UK since 1997. It’s a mature market, but we find that the focus on leak detection revolves around finding existing leaks in the district metered areas (DMAs), which is where the highest use of water is.

At Atmos we’re bringing our 30 years’ experience that we've accrued in the oil and gas sector, which focuses on finding new leaks as they form, and bringing it to the water sector with a focus on the upstream network and trunk mains, where there's a close association with water supply interruptions due to bursts in those pipelines.

Question 2: Can water leak detection systems utilize existing instrumentation?

Yes, we can utilize existing instrumentation, but we need to consider the repeatability, resolution and the data acquisition rate of the instrumentation.

If there's any pre-filtering or pre-dampening applied to the sensor, it can have a negative impact on the system. That's generally why we prefer to use analog pressure transmitters.

Question 3: Do you see the leak detection system being a fixed monitoring solution or a portable “lift and shift” solution?

Both! In a water network, there are strategically important pipelines and high consequence areas (HCAs). In those situations, it’s important to have an insurance policy.

24/7 coverage with a permanently monitored solution can ensure operators are aware of new leaks forming so they can locate them straight away.

It’s also likely there will be areas in a water distribution network where there are existing leakage problems. However, it can be hard to pinpoint where existing leakage is occurring, but a portable “lift and shift” approach can be used.

In these situations you can deploy some instrumentation, monitor a section of the network for a period of time, find the existing leakage and then lift the equipment and move onto the next area. This gives a water utility the option to find leaks in a more affordable way while still being able to permanently monitor important areas like HCAs simultaneously.

Question 4: Can Atmos’ leak detection systems be deployed on high density polyethylene (HDPE) pipelines?

Our leak detection systems can work on plastic pipelines, as well as metal pipelines. We also have vast experience working on a range of diameters and pipeline lengths.

Question 5: Water networks are dynamic, experiencing variations in flow and pressure due to changes in demand. How confident are you in the technology to quickly adapt to the changed configurations?

We’ve developed a vast amount of experience in oil and gas and they have very similar characteristics to water pipelines. In water we have to deal with variable flow rates, varying pressure and multiple injection and delivery points.

When we talk about a water leak detection system, we need to be able to tune the system effectively and provide the right hardware in the right locations. It's about providing a balancing act between the reliability and the sensitivity we can get.

Question 6: What causes water leaks?

A variety of reasons cause water leaks. Looking at water consumption from properties that don't have a water meter, the volume of water used can't be defined and this can contribute to the official leakage figure within those properties. Some of the contributing factors to leakage are:

  • Customer-side plumbing faults
  • Differences in soil temperature and moisture content that can make pipes move
  • Fragile pipelines where the material is corroded because of a lack of investment and not renewing the pipelines often enough
  • High pressure in the pipeline and improper pressure management

There's a wide variety of reasons that contribute to leakage and overall because it's a pressurized environment. The leakage rates are also higher because small leaks then turn into larger leaks.

Question 7: Is a water leak an emergency?

While the same size leak occurring at different parts of the network may or may not be an emergency, leakage has been a permissible practice in the UK for many years. It's an associated byproduct of transporting water through the network under pressure.

A background leak that occurs in a network might not be considered an emergency. However, if you have a trunk main that bursts and it stops the water supply to a large number of customers, that would be considered an emergency. For wastewater, the environmental impact associated with any leakage is high and that would also be considered an emergency.

Question 8: What’s the current process for trunk mains leak detection?

Looking at leak detection across the whole water network, the main focuses are on urban areas and DMAs, but there is a growing focus on trunk mains leak detection.

We find that there are a variety of techniques used and a lot of them are external based methods. For example, aerial drones, satellite imagery and sniffer dogs can all be used to detect leaks. The most common method of external leak detection is line walking, with water utility personnel walking up and down the trunk mains periodically to see if there are any signs of leakage.

It's worth noting that a lot of leakage is undiscoverable at ground level, so line walking is quite a basic method. We're keen to promote a technology driven approach to trunk mains leak detection that focuses on finding new leaks as they form.

Question 9: How is it possible to overcome the additional data transportation and storage costs associated with needing more instrumentation in water networks?

Atmos has leak detection hardware that processes the 60 hertz data internally, greatly minimizing the data transmission volumes.

What the device is doing is looking for any new leaks or bursts forming on the pipeline. Once an alarm is generated, a data packet associated with the event is sent out and the data is further analyzed within our data portal.

By utilizing Edge processing we can reduce the high costs typically associated with the transmission of high resolution data.

Question 10: What is required for a leak detection system in the water sector?

Any leak detection system needs to find leaks quickly and locate them accurately. In the downstream area of the water network, high population densities often mean those customers call in those leaks as soon as they occur.

In trunk mains in the upstream network, leaks are closely linked to water supply interruptions for large numbers of people. There currently isn’t much instrumentation that allows utilities to identify that leakage, so high quality, high resolution raw data is crucial.

Instrumentation is needed that has the versatility to be deployed at various points along the network where pipeline monitoring is required. This allows utilities to find new leaks as they form.

Another critical area involves ensuring a low rate of false alarms, otherwise operators won't have enough trust in the system to take action when an alarm event is raised.

Learn more about how we support the water industry

Clean water networks aren’t the only part of the water distribution network facing leak detection challenges. In the wastewater industry for example, leaks can occur from factors such as a build up of wet wipes, fats, oils and grease as well as pipe corrosion.

Harry and Martin recently answered some of our most asked questions about wastewater.