Quantification and compensation of systematic errors in pressure measurements applied to oil pipelines

The monitoring of pipeline operation is an important research topic, especially for the detection and localization of leaks as well as for an efficient control. For these purposes, physical quantities in pipelines are calculated from measurement data on the basis of a mathematical model. In contrast to static models, adaptive models vary their parameters or even their structure to reach the most probable solution. But in most cases, even the best fit will hold residuals caused by discrepancies between the real system and its model. These residuals allow an estimation of travel-time delays of pressure waves and offsets in pressure values. The basic idea of our approach is to interpret these systematic, time-invariant errors of pressure measurements in pipelines either as sensor displacements or as technical defects. The proposed procedure leads to a hypothesis for a model update, regarding the sensor positions. This displacement compensation as well as a variance analysis was successfully applied to real data from a crude oil pipeline in Europe. A cross validation proves the general capability of the developed method to reduce the uncertainties.