R&D - the thinking behind the product

CleanFlow Systems Product Engineer Tim Renton said the Profiler was designed to remove the subjectivity from current standard CCTV inspections, especially in the areas of plastic pre-adoption ovality, and concrete corrosion assessment.

The Profiler provides real data that can be measured, providing authorities with absolute information about the condition of their underground assets. Once the data has been collected and analysed the engineers can decide on whether to adopt the line or the best course of action for the rehabilitation of the line.

The range adapts to most existing conventional CCTV inspection covering the widest pipe sizes using both laser and underwater sonar systems. The system uses smart software with the operator processors the measurement data. The large pipe laser profiling units are capable of scanning pipes from about 30 centimetres to three metres in diameter.

Corrosion in wastewater lines can now be caught before the reinforcing bar is exposed, once the reinforcing bar has been exposed the cost of rehabilitation increases dramatically. With regard to pre-adoption of plastic lines, lines that do not meet the authorities guidelines need to be replaced at the contractors’ expense – preventing costly delays once the lines have been put in service; this is especially evident when it comes to storm water lines running beneath highways in the United States.

Lanes for Drains

The team at CleanFlow trained Lanes for Drains, an inspection and rehabilitation Company in the UK, purchased the Profiler systems.

Lanes for Drains Operations Director Alan Wallis said that the profiling systems will considerably expand the opportunities and applications for the company’s CCTV crews.

"For our clients, it means that they will have precise figures to calculate the capacity and flow in a given pipe whether they need it for health and safety, environmental, industrial or commercial reasons.

"The Profiler will be especially valuable to the reline teams when they are assessing liner thickness requirements. For the first time we will know to the millimetre the diameter of a pipe and whether there are any variations to that along its full run."

Profiling North America

The Florida Department of Transportation has specified since 2006 that all pipe projects with diameters from 20 to 120 cm must be verified for ovality by a laser profiler before the contract can be handed over. The Arizona Department of Transportation requires ten per cent of jobs to be similarly scanned.

PipeFlo Contracting Corp. of Hamilton, Ontario Canada, owns one of the province’s first large pipe laser profiling units, purchased from CleanFlow Systems.

President of PipeFlo Bruce Noble said “We’ve had the unit for maybe four or five months, but we’ve already used it for contracts in Hamilton and Ottawa. We’re probably the only contractor in the province that can profile big pipes.”

Noble says that the technology is becoming more relevant as more and more flexible pipe is used in infrastructure projects.

“Polyethylene and PVC pipe can distort after backfill and we can go over that pipe before it’s put into service. That’s what’s driving the demand for us. People are saying, ‘prove to me that the pipe hasn’t squashed on us.’”

Future development

Mr Renton said there are currently about 300 Profiler systems in 32 countries around the world. “The largest current markets are in Germany and the United States. However there is a growing demand for corrosion assessment especially in large diameter pipes.”

CleanFlow Systems, based in New Zealnd, plan to release Version 7 of the Profiler software in early 2009 expanding on the Profiler analysis tools. It will also give users the ability to produce high definition report videos that combine inspections and graphs.