Photonic sensing start-up Senergetics seeks out corrosive piping

Start-up Senergetics has developed a sensor system that can spot corrosion of industrial piping as it starts to happen, even if buried under a thick layer of insulation. The potential for cost savings as well as the reduction of CO2 emissions is huge.

Corrosion is a major headache for every chemical plant owner. A big facility may have kilometres of steel piping, a lot of it covered in a thick layer of insulation to prevent energy loss. Especially in these sections, it’s labour-intensive and costly to find spots where water has crept in and started eating away at the steel. A number of imaging techniques are available to peep through the glass wool and jacketing, but these can only provide a snapshot of the situation at a particular spot at a particular time. They are too expensive to be used anywhere else than suspect locations. It would be so much better if plant operators could ‘continuously’ monitor all their piping for corrosion under insulation (CUI).

Enter Senergetics, one of the latest shoots on the budding Dutch integrated photonics ecosystem. The Eindhoven-based startup is close to commercialising a fibre-optic sensing system that can detect CUI as well as leaks. Easily installed along the outside of pipe cladding, it can save up to 60% on maintenance costs, a recent trial project at a real-world plant revealed. That’s millions of euros.

And that’s not all. Senergetics’ system doubles as an energy loss monitor, quantifying thermal inefficiencies from poor insulation. In addition to more cost savings, this could help companies reduce their CO2 emissions. The worldwide annual heat loss caused by poor industrial insulation has been estimated to be equivalent to 520 megatons of CO2, or roughly the amount produced by 170,000 Dutch households per year to fulfil their electricity and heating needs. Senergetics believes that it can eliminate at least 10% of this spillage.

On top

Senergetics employs sensing technology developed by Alkmaar-based PhotonFirst. These sensor systems consist of optical fibres inscribed with microstructures called fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs), which partially reflect light travelling through the fibre. As the fibre is subjected to a temperature change, the wavelength of the reflected light changes proportionally. By measuring this shift, temperature change can be quantified.

“We deploy hundreds or thousands of sensors to continuously gather data. By applying machine learning and AI to analyse this data, we can effectively detect corrosive environments,” explains Senergetics CTO and co-founder Anitha.

Following a number of trials at three different plants in the Netherlands and Germany, Senergetics was recently invited to do a follow-up test at Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory. “In the first test, we managed to point out perfectly where CUI was happening, demonstrating the value of our technology in terms of maintenance and safety operations.” In another test for Kaefer, a German provider of technical services to industrial plants, Senergetics went head-to-head with seven competing solutions – and came out on top.

Year-end

With these results, the young firm can’t wait to start offering its technology on a commercial basis. The biggest remaining obstacle is certification for use in industrial environments, but Anitha is confident these hurdles can be scaled without issue. “Since our technology is based on tiny pulses of light, there aren’t any safety risks to speak of. We are compliant with the European ATEX directives for potentially explosive environments, for example.”

Senergetics aims to launch a commercial product – a combination of hardware and subscription software – by year-end.