The state of Selangor, which contains the capital city, Kuala Lumpur, located on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia is home to approx. 5.4 million people. Jalur Cahaya Sdn Bhd (JC) is a full-service environmental engineering company that helps Malaysian water utilities reduce non-revenue water (NRW). They identified approximately 3,000 kilometers of transmission mains that cannot be easily surveyed using their existing technologies.
Business Advantage
Advanced acoustic-based leak detection technology for surveying long distances of water transmission mains.
Key Benefits of EchoShore®-M:
- Surveys long distances of pipeline quickly
- Mobile
- Works on non-ferrous, low-pressure pipes
- Non-invasive
- Field teams require no previous leak detection experience
- Cloud-based analysis done at headquarters
- Enhanced detection nodes
- More accurate than standard correlators
- Low cost of implementation
Situation
Jalur Cahaya Sdn Bhd (JC) is a full-service environmental engineering company that helps Malaysian water utilities reduce non-revenue water (NRW).
NRW is the difference between the volume of water supplied to the system and the volume of water billed to the customers. Simply put, it is water loss for which the utility receives zero revenue. NRW is an important issue facing water utilities, as it has been conservatively estimated at $14 billion per year worldwide. In developing countries, about 45 million cubic meters are lost daily through water leakage in the distribution networks—enough to serve nearly 200 million people.
JC is responsible for leak detection and NRW reduction on more than 6000 km of large diameter (300 mm – 2000 mm) water transmission mains owned and operated by SYABAS in western Malaysia. They identified approximately 3,000 kilometers of transmission mains that cannot be easily surveyed using their existing technologies. These are typically low-velocity, low-pressure mild steel mains with too many offtakes and bends for their usual in-pipe acoustic-based leak detection technologies to be effective.
We had established a successful track record of non-invasive leak detection using LeakFinder-ST™, which was doing a great job finding leaks in the smaller diameter (150 mm - 300 mm), low-pressure distribution mains but JC needed a new technology solution to accurately survey the much longer distances of their large diameter transmission mains and to do it very quickly. It also needed to be much more sensitive than conventional correlators in order to detect quiet, low-frequency leaks in amongst the typical background noise produced by urban traffic and radio interference.
Action
Our R&D team worked closely together with JC to develop EchoShore®-M – a rugged and lightweight portable version of their EchoShore®-TX technology; a permanently installed system for monitoring critical large diameter pipes. EchoShore®-M was created as a cost-effective solution to quickly survey very long distances and find the biggest leaks using the latest generation of acoustic sensor nodes combined with secure wireless data transmission back to a central monitoring team. This means your most highly trained leak detection engineers are no longer in the field but office-based thereby reducing overall field crew costs.
JC brought in EchoShore®-M technology for a 12-month field deployment with the objective of significantly reducing NRW loss in their transmission main network without impacting on customer supply. Echologics® field reps were able to quickly put the program into action. More than 20 local technicians with no prior leak detection experience were trained on the new technology and were hard at work in the field within weeks.
“Our field staff are able to work very closely with our clients to develop specific solutions and technologies that are tailored to their needs. EchoShore®-M was developed because of a specific need JC had,” says Mark Nicol, Director of Sales & Operations, Asia Pacific for us. “We see JC more as a strategic partner than a client. We’re working with them not only on this project but together to develop more projects throughout the region.”
“EchoShore®-M is a new technology with enhanced nodes able to survey longer distances,” says Faisal Salleh, Senior Executive Non- Revenue Water Division for Jalur Cahaya, “so we’re able to cover a larger network much more quickly.”
Results
After just 3 months of a scheduled 12-month program, over 200 km of pipeline had been surveyed using EchoShore®-M. JC field crews discovered a total of 22 leaks, 14 of which were below ground. “We estimate the combined volume of these leaks to be 2.79 Ml/d,” reports Salleh. “Our two-year goal is to reduce NRW loss by 154 Ml/d and I’m confident we will achieve this result.”
