Cyberhawk Innovations (Livingston, United Kingdom) recently completed the world’s first internal industrial chimney inspection using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
The project, which took place earlier this year, was completed over the course of two days at one of the largest and most complex refining sites in Europe. The name and specific location of the client were not disclosed.
Traditional internal industrial chimney inspections require personnel to climb inside dangerous and potentially chemically hazardous areas, Cyberhawk says. However, inspecting the chimney stack with the UAVs allowed for a quick and safe audit of the chimney. As such, personnel were not required to physically enter the chimney to complete the inspection.
This new inspection solution complements Cyberhawk’s existing external chimney stack inspection service, which involves using a drone to capture high-definition images of the stack’s full external surface, before creating a three-dimensional model of the chimney. The model provides accurate sizing and positioning of defects, along with the provision of high-definition orthophotos of each elevation of the chimney, all delivered in Cyberhawk’s cloud-based asset management software, iHawk.
“We have been working with this particular client for more than six years, and this project demonstrates continued confidence from one of the world’s oil and gas supermajors in our ability to deliver more complex and challenging projects,” says Malcolm Connolly, technical director and founder of Cyberhawk.
“Our portfolio includes a significant amount of work undertaken at refinery and petrochemical sites, such as flare stacks, cooling towers, and pipe-rack inspections,” he adds. “We have already been using UAVs to conduct external inspections on chimneys for more than five years, and the completion of this recent work scope has proven the feasibility of using drones internally. Completion of this project represents a major leap forward for drone technology and demonstrates the huge safety improvements on offer.”
The project builds upon Cyberhawk’s existing drone inspection service. In 2015, that team used a UAV to conduct the world’s first internal inspection of a cargo oil tank on a floating, production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel.
Other projects in 2016 have also added to the company’s internal inspection credentials, including work on an internal steam boiler, operational thermal power stations, oil storage tanks, and inside large chemical plants.
For more information, visit Cyberhawk Innovations at
www.thecyberhawk.com.