In this episode of The Pipeline Technology Podcast, Sponsored by Pipeline & Gas Journal, Tim Mally from CSNRI joins to discuss composite repairs in the pipeline industry.

Tim covers the intricacies of composite repairs, emphasizing the importance of understanding the tools and standards involved.

The conversation includes the definition and applications of composite repairs, challenges faced by integrity engineers, the evolving role of composites in pipeline integrity management, and their potential applications in emerging pipeline technologies such as hydrogen and CO2 transport.

Throughout the conversation, Tim highlights the necessity for thorough testing, analysis, and industry collaboration to ensure the effective and safe use of composite repair systems.

Composite Repair Show Notes, Links, Insider Terms:

• Tim Mally is the Director of Pipeline Integrity at CSNRI. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn.
• CSNRI | CSNRI is the world’s leading manufacturer of proven, highly-engineered products for the repair and rehabilitation of critical infrastructure. CSNRI’s composite solutions address pipeline anomalies from metal loss and small deformations to large deformations, crack/crack-like features, as well as damage to process piping working in the range of -58ºF to 730ºF (-50ºC to 388ºC).
• Pipeline & Gas Journal is the essential resource for technology, industry information, and analytical trends in the midstream oil and gas industry.  For more information on how to become a subscriber, visit pgjonline.com/subscribe.
• Composites are used to create high-pressure pipelines that are resistant to corrosion and erosion. 
• Clock Spring is a system of related fiber-glass and resin matrix products used to repair defects in pipes, arrest ductile fractures in high-pressure pipelines, reinforce dents or other mechanical defects in high-pressure pipelines, protect pipe at support location, and repair defects in low-pressure pipelines.
• Midstream is the processing, storing, transporting and marketing of oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids.
• Downstream is the process involved in converting oil and gas into the finished product, including refining crude oil into gasoline, natural gas liquids, diesel, and a variety of other energy sources. The closer an oil and gas company is to the process of providing consumers with petroleum products, the further downstream the company is said to be.
• Geotechnical Hazard (Geohazard) is any process that takes place on the earth’s surface that can negatively impact the integrity of a pipeline. (e.g. earthquakes, landslides, subsidence, etc.)
• Integrity Management(IM) (Pipeline Integrity Management) is a systematic approach to operate and manage pipelines in a safe manner that complies with PHMSA regulations.
• ASME PCC-2 is the standard that provides methods for repair of equipment, piping, pipelines, and associated ancillary equipment within the scope of ASME Pressure Technology Codes and Standards after it has been placed in service.
• § 192.713 Transmission lines: Permanent field repair of imperfections and damages.
• § 195.585 What must I do to correct corroded pipe?
• Gas Technology Institute is an American non-profit research and development organization which develops, demonstrates, and licenses new energy technologies for private and public clients, with a particular focus on the natural gas industry.
• API (American Petroleum Institute) represents all segments of America’s natural gas and oil industry. API has developed more than 700 standards to enhance operational and environmental safety, efficiency, and sustainability.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) is responsible for providing pipeline safety oversight through regulatory rule-making, NTSB recommendations, and other important functions to protect people and the environment through the safe transportation of energy and other hazardous materials.
• MAOP (maximum allowable operating pressure) was included in a bulletin issued by PHSMA informing owners and operators of gas transmission pipelines that if the pipeline pressure exceeds MAOP plus the build-up allowed for operation of pressure-limiting or control devices, the owner or operator must report the exceedance to PHMSA on or before the fifth day following the date on which the exceedance occurs. If the pipeline is subject to the regulatory authority of one of PHMSA’s State Pipeline Safety Partners, the exceedance must also be reported to the applicable state agency.
• Tensile Testing, also known as tension testing, is a fundamental materials science and engineering test in which a sample is subjected to a controlled tension until failure.

Composite Repair Full Episode Transcript:

Announcer: The “Pipeline Technology Podcast,” brought to you by “Pipeline & Gas Journal,” the decision-making resource for pipeline and midstream professionals. Now your host, Russel Treat.

Russel Treat: Welcome to the Pipeline Technology Podcast, episode 44. On this episode, our guest is Tim Mally. We’re going to talk about composite repairs and why you cannot apply tools you don’t understand. Tim, welcome to the Pipeline Technology Podcast.

Tim Mally: Hey, Russel. Thanks for having me.

Russel: Maybe a good way to start here is tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and who you’re with and how you got into your role.

Tim: My background is in mechanical engineering. I graduated in 2010 from the University of Tulsa with a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering. Immediately, my only job out of college was as a design engineer for a composite repair manufacturer.

I have really enjoyed the job. I’ve gotten to travel the world, do some crazy things, go to some war-torn countries, and repair some aging assets. Really been a great experience for me.

Now I work for CSNRI Composites. The company that I worked for was acquired and then merged with four other composite companies so now we make CSNRI Composites. We’re the world’s leading designer, developer, and manufacturer of composite repair systems.

Russel: For anybody listening to this podcast that doesn’t know what a composite repair is, what is a composite repair?

Tim: If you wanted to take a really high step up, first of all, composite, just going back to Webster and his nice handy dictionary, is something made up of distinct parts. We use composites every day, whether you would like to realize it or not.

Like I’m sitting on a desk that has multiple parts that got combined to give it the properties that I want to sit here and use it. That’s a composite. Composites in the pipeline industry are combining a reinforcing fiber and a resin, typically an epoxy, can be a polyurethane, or a polyester.

There’s lots of different resins you can use. You’re combining that with either a fiberglass or a carbon fiber. Together, the combination of those two components is going to give you the performance that you’re looking for in terms of reinforcing pipelines.

Russel: Great explanation. The thematic thing I wanted to put with this episode was the idea of you can’t use tools you don’t understand.

Not being an integrity guy but having done a lot of these conversations on the podcast over the years, one of the things that I believe to be true about where we are in the industry is we’re actually getting to the point where everybody accepts that composites are viable repair approaches.

We’re way away or we have long ways to go as an industry before it’s a generally understood and accepted technology. Meaning, it might be accepted by the industry as appropriate and I might know it’s out there, but myself personally, as an engineer that’s got a repair a defect on a pipeline, I’m not going to use it because I don’t understand that tool.

I’m not standing behind a repair that I don’t understand. I’m not going out and doing engineering that’s R&D when I’m dealing with a…in production pipeline, right?

Tim: Exactly.

Russel: How does one become a knowledgeable composites repair engineer?

Tim: [laughs] There’s quite a few places you can go to. I think about the mechanical engineering degree that I got. I had maybe half a course on composites. It was written by a professor who wrote his own textbook. Then, applying that, who knew that would be what’s put food on my table for my family for 14 years now?

Russel: [laughs] It’s funny how that works.

Tim: Yeah. [laughs] It’s definitely an on-the-job training type of thing where I’ve learned a lot about the research that’s happened and is continuing to happen. You asked, where can you go to learn about what makes a good repair? I think there’s a lot of components that go into that.

First and foremost, as an integrity engineer that’s responsible for understanding integrity threats and how they affect their pipeline and then selecting appropriate repair systems to be able to permanently reinforce and remediate those threats, first and foremost, what you’re going to be audited on goes back to the CFR.

If you’re looking at 192 for gas or 195 for liquids, you need to understand what your alternative repair method options are. For better or worse, the CFR is pretty vague in terms of the definitions of what they want from an alternative repair method.

There’s a lot of room for innovation in that. If you look at 192.713 or 195.585, which is the liquid side, it says, “An alternative repair method needs to, through reliable engineering tests and analyses, show they can permanently restore the serviceability of the pipe.”

That’s a mouthful, but when you look at that, there’s a couple things that you really want to dive in on. It’s the reliable engineering testing. There’s a lot of testing labs out there that do a lot of composite repair testing.

ADV Integrity and Chris Alexander and his outfit is a primary one. They’ve made their name on that. He’s been doing it for decades. There’s a lot of others out there as well that are doing a lot of composite testing now too.

Then, you also have your reliable engineering tests and analyses. Your analysis is just as important. All of the equations, composite can seem like Pandora’s box, where it’s black magic and you don’t really understand how you get from, I’m sending in this external corrosion defect to this composite company and they wave their Harry Potter wand and out pops a composite repair.

There really is a lot of science on it. There’s a lot of great analysis that’s been derived over time, through different standards and committees and…

[crosstalk]

Russel: Part of the answer to the question is I have to have a familiarity with what standards are out there and how those standards apply to different kinds of repairs.

Tim: Exactly.

Russel: If I’m a new integrity engineer, where would I go to find a comprehensive list of those standards?

Tim: At this point in time, I’m sure that the list of standards that are applicable to IMP and threat remediation is probably part of the onboarding process. When you’re trying to drill down and get it to where you’ve got a comprehensive list for how it applies to composite repairs, that’s why we’re having this conversation.

You got to know a person who knows a person to get there. That’s really what my whole job is these days, is to help provide education and awareness to integrity engineers of the research and of the data and of the analysis that goes into it.

Right now, I’m in a recurring meeting with an operator who’s looking at adopting composites for the first time. We’re just spending an hour every week going through what these resources are. Every week, we find something new to detail.

Russel: It’s an interesting question, right, Tim?

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: What happens is, you’re not really dealing with API standard because you’re at a level of specificity where the engineering and the math has to be very specifically addressed. You’re navigating a soup, if you will, of various technical papers and resources. Have you ever sat down and tried to assemble that and create a mechanism for somebody to be able to navigate it?

Tim: We have very rudimentary mechanisms [laughs] right now. I think that’s a great idea, Russel. Creating a resource of someone who can know exactly where to go and which standards, know exactly where to go and the regulations, know this is the type of research I need to do to validate a composite repair manufacturer or the products that they produce, that’d be a pretty…

Russel: Or this is the research I can use that’s existing, right?

Tim: Yeah. Exactly. There’s a lot of groups out there that try to do that.

Russel: That’s what the composite engineering firms do, is that sort of thing. That’s also what you’re saying that you do, but there’s not that third-party tool for it. To me, it’s…

Tim: Something that comes to mind right now is the Composite Technology Advancement Group. That’s a group that Chris Alexander started. It’s a room full of technology companies, operators, third-party engineering firms. At times, regulators join in.

That’s a good place to start, is to come to something like that and understand where the technology is at, understand how it fits into the industry at large. It’s very pipeline-focused. That’s a good place to start.

Russel: You make a really good point, in that…More generally, I would frame that as technical networking. If you’re going to be an expert in this practice, then you’ve got to reach out. You got to know people because no one engineer can possibly know the width and the breadth of the material that’s out there.

Tim: Absolutely.

Russel: I may have a pretty good clue, or I might come across something, “Oh yeah. I’ve done 10 of these. I know how to do that one.” There’s always something that comes at you as a curveball that you haven’t seen before. It’s just the nature of things.

Participation in the committees is really important. I can’t tell you how many times in my domain of leak detection and measurement and SCADA, where the most valuable resource I had was knowing who to pick up the phone and call.

Tim: Yeah. [laughs]

Russel: Phone a friend, man, that’s the other key mechanism. To phone a friend, you got to have a friend.

Tim: Exactly. [laughs]

Russel: Interesting.

Tim: I don’t want to be too self-serving, but we have developed some of these resources at CSNRI. We call them TEC Talks. It’s not me. It’s not anyone commercial. It is just a bunch of online talks. We were bored in COVID and we decided to pump out as much material we can to help educate. There is a link on our website. Just look up TEC Talk, T-E-C for TEC, and then talk.

Russel: We’ll link that up in the show notes for the listeners.

Tim: There’s so many different resources on there.

Russel: One of the challenges, particularly for relatively new engineers, is just navigating all that can be challenging.

Tim: It’s daunting.

Russel: Just because it’s so much and, “Does this apply, or does that apply?” I remember when I was first doing measurement work and a “Standard” would come up. I’d go get a copy of the Standard. I’d sit down and I’d read the Standard. I’m like, “I just read that. I know what the words are, but I don’t know what it said.”

[laughter]

Russel: You have to have a certain amount of experience to just have the context in order to have the conversation, right?

Tim: Absolutely. To your point, there is a lot of people out there that know that they can call people. They know, “I need to call this person and I’m going to bring them in. They’re going to help me with that education process. They’re going to help link me with some of these resources that we’re talking about.”

Russel: Get me at least into the sandbox I need to play in, rather than trying to find the sandbox, right?

Tim: Exactly. That’s right.

Russel: One of the other things I wanted to ask you about is what are…? Well, I want to frame this question a little bit. I’m not an integrity guy, but I would frame the state of the art of integrity management is you weld a clamp onto the defect. That’s the state of the art. We just put good metal over bad metal. That’s basically been…

Tim: [laughs]

Russel: …our standard repair methodology for a long period of time. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s limits to what that can do. I would frame my notional understanding of integrity management of composites, if you can’t put a clamp on it, use a composite.

Tim: [laughs]

Russel: That’s probably way, way over-simplistic. What would you say are the most common kinds of applications for composites?

Tim: To really address your “When you can’t weld a clamp or a steel sleeve on it, use a composite,” I like to frame this conversation in return as, you want to walk into every anomaly dig with options because every ditch is different.

Every anomaly, you may be thinking that you’re about to go in and evaluate from metal loss, based on what your ILI tool called, but now, all of a sudden, you’ve got magnetic particle testing that’s going on and you identify some flaws in your seam weld.

All of a sudden, you’re changing what you originally were going after. You came prepared with steel sleeves and now you don’t have an option because you can’t find a landing zone to weld a type B steel sleeve over those seam weld flaws that you just found.

I’ve heard horror stories where people have had a 10-inch-long seam weld anomaly they need to address, but because of the lack of clean pipe, over 60 percent of the pipe that’s in the ground in North America was put in the ground before 1970, which means very old pipe manufacturing methods. That means there’s a lot of dirty pipe out there.

I’ve heard people with that 10-inch flaw, digging 500 feet to land a type B steel sleeve, whereas a two-foot-long composite would be able to address that issue and address it with a lot less risk because you’re not doubling the weight of that pipeline, or more over that 500-foot length to get to that the 10-inch long anomaly.

Russel: I think you’re right. Your frame is better than mine, for sure.

Tim: [laughs]

Russel: I think any engineer would say that, “To the extent I have more tools in my toolbox that I can apply and I understand those tools and their relative strengths and weaknesses and their relative economic consequences, then I’m better qualified, I’m better equipped to do an effective repair, address the anomaly, minimize cost.”

Tim: Exactly. At a forum I was at recently, one of the speakers essentially said, “Public scrutiny is not decreasing, new pipelines aren’t getting built. Our assets aren’t getting any younger and integrity budgets are not increasing exponentially. Yet the public still expects their energy to be available when they need it”

Making these tight repair calls and having that flexibility and those tools in the ditch are going to allow that to get done. To make a good decision on when a composite is appropriate, I’ll be the first to admit, we’re not going to be able to repair everything.

There is an envelope, especially with each anomaly and based on the testing and analysis that we have, that we’re going to be comfortable with and we’re going to recommend and other areas where we don’t.

Russel: That’s good engineering, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: That’s just good engineering. In general practice is using your judgment in order to understand what the best approach is, what will work, what won’t work, and then, in the range of things that will work, what’s optimal.

Tim: If I’m putting myself in an integrity engineer’s shoes and I hear some composite salesman coming off the street and say, “We can repair any defect you have on your pipeline,” I’m going to run for the hills from someone like that.

To your point, and the theme of this episode is we want to provide data to help make these informed decisions, and that will, in turn, lead to proper use of composites in these scenarios as that tool in the integrity toolbox.

Russel: I think it’s one of the things about integrity management that’s really important to understand, it’s extremely technical. There’s a lot of math involved. You have to know what math to apply to what problem.

Tim: For example, ASME PCC-2 is the current existing composite standard that’s out there. It gives a list of things and tests that are recommended to validate a composite repair. If you look at that composite repair standard, it only has equations for metal loss, but it doesn’t have an equation for dents.

It doesn’t have an equation for wrinkle bends, for crack-like defects, fracture mechanics, stuff like that. You are going to need to develop that math as a composite repair manufacturer to extrapolate the data from your testing to be able to apply to what’s actually happening in the ditch.

Russel: You just said a mouthful, Tim.

Tim: [laughs]

Russel: An absolute mouthful. I understand what you mean, but the idea that I’m going to go to a laboratory, I’m going to run a test, and then I’m going to validate, based on that test, that my repair method and the mathematics I’m using for that repair method are valid…

The other thing about integrity management, with repairs, is I need to know I made it and then I’ve got to be able to monitor the life of that repair over time. That’s a whole another level of challenge. Having that test and that test basis and having that documentation and having that associated with repairs is critical, to say the least.

Tim: 100 percent.

Russel: What kind of new applications are people coming across where composites are being applied, that integrity engineers might not be aware of?

Tim: To one of your earlier points, composites are generally being accepted. I would say that the general acceptance level is for metal loss repair, which is typically external corrosion or a dent or mechanical damage. That’s where a lot of the early testing happened on composites.

A lot of the research that’s been done lately has been on these seam welds that I was talking about, on stress corrosion cracking, on reinforcement of girth welds where you have weather and outside forces as a threat. Perhaps the girth weld is extremely old and has the threat of a rupture if the wrong combination of weather events hits it.

Some of the research that we’ve done, that have been extremely interesting, is to ask the question of how can a composite reinforce a girth weld so that a rupture doesn’t happen when a landslide hits it.

We’ve done some pretty crazy testing on that. We’ve dived into more math than you can imagine to justify why a composite works on that. It’s been a heck of a wild ride the last four or five years on that.

Russel: That’s interesting. I don’t even know how to visualize how you set that kind of testing up.

Tim: Yeah. [laughs] At this point, you’ve got a few different ways you can look at it. I still don’t think the optimum test of what’s actually happening in the field has been achieved yet, but the primary two ways of testing it are, in a bending load frame, so you reinforce a girth weld.

You put ends caps on, internalize the pressure up to whatever the MAOP of that pipe is. Then, while it’s under pressure, you bend the pipe until failure. That either happens in the composite, or it happens in the base pipe.

Then another test would be an axial tension test, where, same thing, you’ve got your defective girth weld. You reinforce it with a composite, and then it’s 100 percent pure tension. You’re pulling on each end of that pipe as if it’s getting yanked in both directions and measuring how the composite does in that scenario.

Russel: That makes perfect sense, but being a structural engineer by education, I can visualize other failure mechanisms other than just those two. Those are probably the primary, right?

Tim: Yeah.

Russel: There’s also, what about twisting the pipe? What about…

Tim: Torsion.

Russel: …bending and twisting the pipe and all the other kinds of things that will actually happen in the world, right?

Tim: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s where, as a composite repair manufacturer and having the responsibility to be able to provide technology that’s usable to the industry, meaning it’s gone through these tests, we really have to do a lot of homework when we’re taking a look at every one of these last things.

Then there’s also an investment component. When you take a look at that, you got to have the investment to be able to do that testing. That’s where there’s been a lot of joint industry programs to take a look at that.

You look at what happens when that pipe has a lot of pressure cycling and then it gets hit by a landslide. You take a look at what happens when you install with pressure in the pipe and then you go down to zero PSI and then you do the axial tension test.

For a lot of these different types of tests, there’s so many different ways that you can look at it. Usually, need begets investment. When you get pipelines that have these issues, there’s going to be some money being put towards research and finding another tool for that toolbox.

Russel: I think the point you’re making is that developing understanding in order to do this is not just about understanding the composites themselves or designing repairs, it’s also about understanding failure mechanisms and what math you’re using to model what failure mechanism.

Tim: Absolutely. Then it’s comparing that math to the actual test results that you’ve gotten. If your math says that…

Russel: That’s what I mean. Exactly. It’s knowing that my math is a good model of what’s actually occurring and then understanding what are the boundaries of the math and what’s actually occurring and make sure those match up. In the measurement world, we call that an equation of state.

Tim: Our engineering manager likes to say he doesn’t need to be accurate. He just needs to be consistently conservative.

Russel: That’s so good, man. Therein lies the difference between measurement and integrity management. In measurement, it’s “I need to be accurate. I need to be consistently accurate.” In integrity, the goal is to be consistently conservative. That’s brilliant. I’m writing that down. I’m saving that for later.

Tim: [laughs] I can’t take credit for that one. That’s our engineering manager, Casey Whalen.

Russel: You could have, if you wanted to and I’d have counted it to you.

Tim: [laughs]

Russel: Kudos to you for giving Casey credit.

Tim: I deal in integrity, so I’ve got to maintain it.

[laughter]

Russel: Exactly. Look, I want to talk a little bit. Before we got on the microphone, we were brainstorming about what we ought to talk about. One of the things we were talking about is energy transition and I’m like, “I’m bored of talking about that. I don’t want to talk about that anymore.”

Tim: [laughs]

[crosstalk]

Russel: I do think it’s important to talk about how do composites add to the tool chest as we move towards some of these new kinds of pipelines. Not new, we’re doing both hydrogen and CO2 for a long time, but we moved to some other kinds of considerations. How do you think composites are going to add value with hydrogen and CO2 in particular?

Tim: Again, just putting myself in an integrity engineer’s shoes, when you’re looking at hydrogen and starting to transport it, that adds a whole new list of threats to your integrity management program, especially right now where a lot of these vintage pipelines that we’ve been talking about have hard spots from their manufacturing process.

When you introduce hydrogen into that environment, it can accelerate hydrogen-induced cracking. You want to be able to have another tool in your toolbox to be able to remediate these hard spots, especially when these hard spots may go for a long time, meaning joints and joints of pipe.

There’s just a lot out there that you’re going to need a composite to be able to reinforce with hydrogen in it.

On CO2, going back to that integrity threat, something I had never thought of until the last couple years, and actually really quick sidebar kind of interesting, the original Clock Spring composite was not actually developed as a composite repair. It was developed as a crack arrestor.

In a fracture control plan, when you have risk of a rupture happening due to an anomaly and that rupture running down the length of the pipe because it doesn’t have sufficient fracture toughness to be able to arrest itself, you’re going to need some form of arrestor to stop that fracture propagation. That’s what the Clock Spring was originally developed as.

Now, it’s coming full circle, what? Four decades later, I guess. We’re looking at transporting CO2, taking it out of the air, putting it in pipelines, sending it to storage caverns underground, but you get a dense phase CO2.

It’s got a lot of impurities because you’re taking it out of your air and you can’t really control what the chemistry it is of it, so when that CO2 pipeline decompresses, it’s going to be at risk of a fracture. You’re going to want to analyze the areas of your CO2 pipeline where you want to stop that fracture immediately.

You’re going to have these, essentially, control points, where you’re saying, “If it ruptures between here and here, I’m going to have a crack arrestor.” This can be a composite that stops that and eliminates any loss of life in that event.

Russel: Interesting. I got to process that a little bit. I’m fairly knowledgeable about CO2 and CO2 pipelining because I’ve worked around it for quite some time, off and on. That’s interesting. You’re making my head spin a little bit. That’s a good thing.

Tim: [laughs] For as many technologies as you’ve evaluated, I’m glad to give you some more things to think about.

Russel: [laughs] Exactly. The other thing with hydrogen, you talked about embrittlement, there’s another issue with hydrogen. That is, it’s a much smaller atom. There’s a lot of things that might be sealed and leak-free in a methane pipeline, that if I converted it to 100 percent hydrogen service, then it might not be sealed and leak-free.

Tim: Absolutely.

Russel: I would think there’s an opportunity for composites for those kinds of leak repairs.

Tim: There’s a lot of research being done on that. As a composite repair manufacturer, I will be the first to acknowledge we’re not there yet, but that’s not to say that we won’t be able to develop technology like that in the coming years and decades.

Russel: I never discount the ability of mankind to innovate, evolve, and transform. I often question the fundamental economics of that. Ability versus economic viabilities, those are kinds of different things. Listen, man. This has been a great conversation, Tim. I appreciate it. I feel like I’m better equipped to be a novice, entry-level integrity engineer.

[background music]

[laughter]

Tim: I appreciate you having me on. I’ve enjoyed the conversation. Hope this continues.

Russel: Thank you very much. You have a good one.

Tim: You as well. Thanks, Russel. Take care.

Russel: I hope you enjoyed this month’s episode of the Pipeline Technology Podcast and our conversation with Tim. If you’d like to support the podcast, please leave us a review. You can do that on Apple Podcast, Google Play, wherever you happen to listen. You can find instructions at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.

If there’s a Pipeline & Gas Journal article where you’d like to hear from the author, please let me know on the Contact Us page at pipelinepodcastnetwork.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next month.