McKean Puts Promising Technology to the Test

Pipeline company's lead engineer epitomizes the title and leads the way

Amy Jo McKean knows promising technology when she sees it but unlike most of us, she acts on it.

Tom Sawyer / ENR Solar power will ease relocation.

McKean is lead engineer at Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline Inc. on a project to install what amounts to a “Distant Early Warning System” for pipelines. It uses technology her previous employer, GE’s Pipeline Integrity Services Group, had acquired and was developing when she moved to Southern Star. It is marketed as ThreatScan. At McKean’s urging, Southern Star is one of the earliest adopters.

 The system inserts hydrophones into the pipeline stream and uses the flowing product as the sound transmission system. It can pinpoint the rumbling of heavy equipment working within 40 ft of a pipeline. McKean began implementing it last spring for the first time in the U.S. on a 13-mile stretch of 760-psi, 16-in-dia gas pipeline near Witchita, Kan. The10-in.-long hydrophones are tapped into the line at aboveground valves normally found at regular intervals on pipelines. The system has scored success, raising the alarm on July 31, 2007, of unregistered digging nearby.

“It’s really a very cool technology and it is going really well,” McKean says. “We are learning it is extremely flow-dependent, but GE is improving the software and we are getting there. The more data we see the more we know.”

Southern Star’s installation uses solar-powered stations to transmit sensor data via satellite to GE processing centers in Houston and Florence, Italy. McKean says she chose solar power to make it easy to relocate the sensors later. A spokesman for GE says similar systems will cost $50,000 to $70,000 per unit, which includes ownership and monitoring.