Kansas City Selects Electro Scan Technology to Assess Sewer Mains

The City of Kansas City, Missouri has selected Electro Scan’s Next Generation leak detection technology for condition assessment of 15-inch and smaller diameter sewer mains as part of a pilot project. The partnership with Electro Scan will include the assessment of 100 pipe segments with an approximate total length of 23,000 feet that cross under environmentally sensitive areas such as creeks, streams, and rivers.

The pilot project is part of Kansas City’s largest infrastructure investment, the Smart Sewer Program. The $4.5 billion Smart Sewer Program represents the first Consent Decree in the nation to include the use of green infrastructure solutions.

“Kansas City’s wastewater infrastructure system spans across 318 square miles,” said Special Assistant City Manager, Andy Shively. “Some of this critical infrastructure lies beneath hard-to-reach locations. Electro Scan technology will be pilot-tested as a cost-effective and smart technology solution to help the City assess and maintain this infrastructure.”

Typically, pipes running under waterways are frequently surcharged or full of effluent, often requiring dewatering with bypass pumping to use legacy closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to try and “see” defects in the pipes. Kansas City approached Electro Scan hoping to find a better solution to access and assess these critical pipes. Electro Scan demonstrated the benefit of its technology during a demonstration, which located and measured defects in a pipe crossing a creek that were missed by CCTV and then verified by dye flood testing.

Due to the majority of their pipes being located in remote-access areas, Kansas City selected Electro Scan’s portable ES-620 for Sewer Mains system to automatically locate and measure defects – in gallons per minute. The technology does not require a pipe to be dewatered, instead mimicking a wet-weather event from inside the pipe to internally assess 360-degrees of a pipe wall. Non-conductive materials prevent electricity from passing through, or along, the wall of a pipe. Electro Scan’s patented tri-electrode current should never be able to “leak” from inside of a pipe to earth, unless there is an opening in the pipe wall. A defect in the pipe that leaks water will also leak electrical current. The larger the defect, the greater the electric current flow as described in ASTM F2550, Standard Practice for Locating Leaks in Sewer Pipes By Measuring the Variation of Electric Current Flow Through the Pipe Wall.

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