Special for relative short “non-standard piggable” pipelines A. Hak Industrial Services designed an intelligent versatile tethered intelligent pigging system which is still attached to an ‘umbilical’. Despite this ‘umbilical’ it still has the ability to inspect pipeline lengths up to 12 kilometer in one run, negotiate an unlimited number of bends, is able to travel in two directions, has the ability to inspect multiple diameters in one inspection run, and provide all ultrasonic measurements on-line.

An advanced data acquisition system stores all data simultaneous on disc’s which will allow for a detailed post processing of these data afterwards, which results in one of the most accurate and detailed ultrasonic analysis of the inspected pipes available in the industry. This Piglet system has combined the advantages of a regular pigging system (inspecting in the original medium) with the advantages of a cable operated pigging system (perfect control and on-line data transmission), whereby the disadvantages of both have been eliminated (complex pigging facilities and limited length and bend capabilities).

The success of the Piglet is based on the patented ‘umbilical’ design and storage. Instead of using strong relative thick cables, the Piglet is using a glass fiber optic which has a diameter of less then 1 mm. This glass fiber optic is not stored on a winch, which is placed outside the pipe, but stored on a patented unwinding reel which is stored in the Piglet itself. This results in an operational mode whereby the glass fiber optic is not pulled into the pipe whilst the Piglet is pumped into the pipeline, but merely unreels the glass fiber whilst it is progressing to the end.