This 3 Km 6 inch wet natural gas pipeline is operated by PetroChina in Southwest of China since 2020. Operation pressure is normally from 15bar to 18bar and the daily capacity is about 1.06MMcfd.
This line never has any pigging since operated because it is not equipped with pig traps (launcher & receiver), only the pig valve on the launching & receiving sites.

It is impossible for pipeline owner to build new stand pig traps under the gas stop-transfer condition, and considering that this line never has any pigging so the through capacity was known, and the pig valve core length only was 300mm, which limited the length of cleaning pig and ILI tool. Moreover, the daily capacity only 1.06MMcfd, the pressure difference was not big. It would be a big trouble for the client if the pig stuck. To overcome the difficulties and ensure a successful project, we customized the solutions including:
1. A customized cleaning pig which has an excellent through capacity that can pass 30%OD deformation.
2. A customized eddy current ILI tool (light weighted, just 6Kg) whose cups were made up by the special material that can reduce the resistance during running. And it was only 270mm long, shorter than the pig valve core length(300mm).
3.Run the cleaning pig before ILI.
4. Run eddy current ILI tool after receiving the cleaning pig successfully.
5.Customize a “pig remover” for receiving (a tool for removing ILI tool from receiving pig valve).
6.Array the PIGPROX intelligent pig tracking tools along the line and record the passing time of each pig tracking positions (totally 3) during running cleaning pig & ILI tool. It was Luckly that we received the cleaning pig successfully(without broken), which meaned we could launch ILI tool, because the mind of “As Simple As Pigging”, that means the PIGPROX ILI tool has the similar through ability as a cleaning pig: it can pass 1.5D back to back bend and 20%OD deformation.

After 48 minutes running, the ILI tool reached the pig receive valve successfully.
Data outcomes were also great: The signal was clear that the signal to noise ratio was high, there were totally 1230 metal loss were detected. It was the first ILI time for this pipeline and it was a meaningful beginning for the “unpiggable” pipelines without launcher & receiver ILI solution!