Case Studies

Skypersonic Technology in Action

Oil & Gas Pipes Inspection

The mission required the inspection of concrete pipes used to pump sea watert hrough a cooling system in a refinery. The aim was to deliver to the customer a detailed section by section report used to determine the internal status of the pipes and decide whether it was necessary to clean them with a high-pressure water system or not. An underground de-sanding pool was the second target of interest for the mission.

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Oil & Gas Spherical Butane Gas Inspection

Inspection of the inside of a spherical gas tank to verify the weldings and general condition. The single tank to inspect was a 12 meters wide sphere under renovation. Instead of sending a technician inside the tank, which may have had residual dangerous gas in it even though it had been cleaned, the Skycopter indoor drone allowed us to complete a visual inspection safely.

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Oil & Gas Platform

Indoor UAVs are capable of reaching places that are difficult, expensive, dangerous, live and in product, or even impossible to approach by manned inspection teams. Just about any asset can be inspected via drone, including boilers, tanks and a variety of offshore platforms. Using drones also allows a range of remote sensors to be put into close proximity to the object being installed or inspected saving both time and money while also improving safety.

Nuclear Plant

Nuclear Power Plant employees are using indoor drones to perform inspections in confined spaces to make the plants even more reliable, while reducing the time and labor costs for inspections as well as risk to their staff. Normally, at least two personnel are sent into a confined space to perform an inspection but by deploying indoor drones, a trained pilot can use its high definition video to capture the necessary footage down to the very last bolt, and send it back to plant teammates for review. This allows the inspection to occur without requiring workers to enter difficult to navigate areas. Using the indoor drones also eliminates the need to build and remove expensive scaffold builds typically needed for manual inspection processes.

Chimney

Industrial chimneys are inspected regularly to insure their structural integrity. Often this requires a person to physically climb the interior of a stack by repelling on ropes and using existing, wall mounted ladders. Not only does this timely effort require a scheduled shut-down to complete, it poses a significant safety risk to the crew involved. Indoor UAV’s provide an opportunity to improve both the efficiency and safety of this operation, while saving significant costs and $ and supporting the ability to capture historic video inspection data.

Boiler

Nozzles and internal analysis of an industrial boiler. A challenging environment due to the metallic structure, high temperatures and the presence of dust. Building scaffoldings inside the boiler would require a long time shutdown of the burner, while using an indoor inspection drone allows more safety, less expenses and extremely reduced downtimes.

Manufacturing

The standard process for manufacturing facilities and maintenance personnel is to erect scaffolding or use mobile scissor lifts while locking out areas of production which is costly and critical to the 24×7 operations needed today. Requiring personnel to access high bay, high-rise gantries, overhead conveyors, Crane and Crane Rail Systems as well as other high ceiling equipment is time consuming, risky and does not allow for complete access and close proximity to critical components in order to determine if repairs are needed or approvals to continue in production can be made. Small, caged UAVs provide a much safer and time saving Inspection solution increasing the areas of infrastructure access needed and allowing manufacturers to maintain and run uninterrupted production operations. And with UAVs providing on board video and image data recording as well as live-streaming during inspection flights, more immediate decisions can be made allowing maintenance personnel to move through a facility and verify all infrastructure at a more rapid pace which equates to Cost and Labor Saving, Increased Production Up-time and Reduced Risk to Staff!