Is Your Hard Spot Management Spot On? With Mike Rosenfeld

Rhett All right on this edition of pipeline things we bring on our esteemed guest Mike Rosenfeld who practically needs no introduction within the industry talking about another very very hot topic - Chris The RSI unit Rhett Hard spots and we do talk about it's not the RSI unit. It's the Hussie the HSSI that's measured in Rosenfeld's. Listen to the whole episode, you know exactly what we mean as to talk about hard spots. Rhett All right, welcome to our PPIM edition of Pipeline Things. We're here live at the conference, always a lot of energy. And we are going to be talking to another author, a co -author in the plenary session who honestly was said needs no introduction. Mike Rosenfeld talking about the present future of practical, pipe body, hard spot integrity management. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Mike Yeah, I'm excited. Rhett Are you-- so I have to start with an apology. Are you still in mourning at the results of the college football championship? Have you managed to move on? Mike Oh, Absolutely, because we still beat Ohio State. [LAUGHTER] Rhett So as you don't know, Mike is a devoted Michigan fan. So I didn't know-- Don't know. Who did you cheer for in the college football championship? Were you torn? Mike No. In fact, I didn't even watch it. I don't like either team. I hope they both lose. Chris They're both evil Rhett That's what we felt like, too, watching it. I was like, "How do I choose which of these two teams that I don't like to look at?" You know, so, um, yeah. Well, maybe once Michigan figures out how to cheat again without getting caught, they'll be back in the... Mike Yeah. Give them time. Rhett So, obviously, we didn't bring you on to talk about football, but we will talk about other things maybe we don't like and pipelines later on. But the starting point for this conversation is your presentation on hard spots that you did a right so hard spots for me. They're not new in the industry, but you've been doing some new work recently right? Mikw Right, so PRCI organized a program Matt 7-2. And we just finished the final report for that around July of last year and one of the I think one of the drivers for that was well first of all there have been some recent hard spot failures yeah so that elevates the tension and concern but the last time anybody looked at hard spots was a INGA report published quite a while ago Rhett It was a long time ago Mike and It was a, I gave a rather incomplete compilation of the data and the information and I think there was a feeling that there's more. Rhett For sure. And so that was the genesis, obviously the failure, combined with it felt like around that failure and also the updated gas rule, which specifically alluded to hard spots is one of the threats that needed to be addressed felt like we saw this kind of, there was a lot of buzz in the industry around that time. Mike Sure, and well, we know that particular concern, levels of concern about particular integrity threats kind of come and go. And so a few years ago is stress corrosion cracking and now it's hard spots. You know, a year from now it might be something new. But nevertheless, it's still a thing we have to get a handle on. Rhett So what do you think in a nutshell? What's the big takeaway from the work that y 'all did this rip around on hard spots? And how was it different than what was done before? Mike Well, the work that was done before didn't necessarily examine all of the potential susceptibilities. It didn't really dig into very deeply into the appropriate responses to the discovery of hard spots. And it really didn't look at how do you apply integrity management principles to dealing with hard spots. So, You know, if you look at all of the components required in an integrity management plan, you know, all of them can be adapted or applied in some way to the management of hard spots. And that includes identifying what pipe can have hard spots. You know, some pipelines have a lot of hard spots, of hard spots some some don't – Rhett Is it not just A .O. Smith because I thought it was just A .O. Smith Chris You obviously didn't raise the advisory bulletin did you dog Rhett Before the advisory bulletin, did read it right Mike Right so the INGA report does note that well there were a lot of hard spot failures in A .O. Smith pipe and by the way I have to mention that hard spots don't start with the pipe making, they start with the plate making. A.O. Smith bought plate from various sources, as do did many other pipe manufacturers in that day as well as today. So we really have to look at what was going on in the plate mills that could cause this and what are the physical attributes, what are the important physical attributes of the pipe? What are the important factors going on at the plate mill or the scalp mill that could lead to hard spots? And that gives us some insights into which which pipelines may have some significant susceptibility to it? And what where where's the risk more moderate? Maybe where's the risk non existent? Rhett So on the subject of susceptibility, because there were a few interesting points, I think that came out of your paper that surprised me a bit. So again, I felt like A. O. Smith was the longtime bad boy, but y 'all brought up Youngstown sheeting too. And that really shocked me because I was I thought I associate Youngstown with low frequency ERW, which is a not a single plate process, right, but feeding – Mike Well, except, except for Youngstown. And first of all, A. O. Smith pipe had a lot of the occurrences because they practically owned the big pipe market until, you know, the mid 1950s or so. And most of the problems are in large diameter pipe made from discrete plate. Now the thing with Youngstown is that, yes, they were doing an ERW process, but they were still making the pipe one joint at a time from discrete plate. That's why they're in the same bucket. And – Chris All vintages of Youngstown pipe? Mike Huh? Chris All vintages of Youngstown pipe? Mike That I can't really answer. Chris But for sure the Earlier stuff or the later stuff? Mike Certainly the later stuff. And during the period of time of interest here when high strengths were attained the old fashioned way with lots of carbon and lots of manganese because it's the combination of that composition with high cooling rates. Now the other thing I gotta say about manufacturers is that, yes, we had a lot of incidents with A. O. Smith pipe, but that's because there was way more A. O. Smith pipe than anybody else's. What we found in the study was that the pipe manufacturer that had the highest rate of occurrences on a per mile basis was Bethlehem. Rhett And that's, so that's really, so I love the way you're presenting this 'cause now you're breaking it down into like percentages of issues like per mile or per mile of line pipe produced, which is really fascinating. Mike Yeah, and that is, there are no real good statistics on that. You know, we don't know really how many miles of brand A or versus brand B were installed. That information was never compiled. All we can look at their capacities by tonnage, but that doesn't mean that that doesn't translate to miles very well, but in the mat 7-2 to study, five of the major pipeline system operators involved in that project They went back and provided data on how many miles of pipe 16 inches in diameter and larger made from through the 1950s and through the 1960s they had. And so we think that that's a pretty good cross -section of the rest of the industry. So we're able to come up with an understanding of how many miles of pipe were produced and used or installed from these different pipe manufacturers in that period of time and in that particular size range. Rhett So another thing that came out of your paper that was, again, I thought there's just lots of, on the susceptibility side, I'm just hitting, for the audience out there, I'm hitting the high points. I really would encourage you to both read the paper and the PRCI report. You pointed to gas lines having significantly more issues than liquid lines. And to me, I'm like, why on earth would the internal product give two cares about the hard spot? What's driving that? Mike Yeah, great question. The hard spot doesn't really care what's in the product or what the product is in the pipe. But the answer to this question is there are three parts to this answer. The first part has to do with the demographics of the pipeline systems. Hazardous liquid pipelines, if you look at the demographics of pipe diameters, there's a significant peak in the population demographics in the eight inch to 12 inch size. What kind of pipe is that? That's the ERW. And it turns out that the ERW pipe forming process doesn't tend to lend itself to hard spots because if, first of all, it's really hard to stop a 30 ton coil moving. Now, if you have a mill, a mill wreck or a cobble, then it's possible that you could get a hard spot right at one or two spots in there. If they're able to salvage the pipe quickly enough, then they can still coil it to for uh for it to be self annealing so you don't get a lot of hard spots in ERW pipe or at least that's what the experience with um critical ERW spots or critical hard spots is that we don't see many in terms of failures uh it's much easier to stop a five ton or ten ton individual plate and that's that's when the um hard hard spots occur. So hazardous liquid pipelines don't tend to have a lot of the susceptible pipe. Secondly, natural gas pipelines, the distribution of diameters is bimodal. So we've got a lot of, you know, 12 inch and 16 inch diameter pipe or smaller, but there's a big peak. In fact, the major peak mileage wise is between 24 and 36 inch diameter. Well, those are the prime candidates for pipe made from discrete plate. So that's part of the answer. The second part of the answer is that even, you know, you can have a hazardous liquid pipelines designed to 72 % SMYS and Class 1 natural gas pipelines designed to operate at 72 % SMYS, but their hydraulic gradients are different. And a liquids pipeline will have much more drop off hydraulically in that operating pressure than natural gas. So looking at the average pressure over the length of a of the pipeline segment, natural gas pipelines typically operated about a 10 % of SMYS or more higher stress level than hazardous liquid pipelines. And then the third part of the answer is the easiest which is there's 50 percent more transmission pipelines than 50 or natural gas than hazardous liquids. So you take all of these together and you wind up with not very many incidents in hazardous liquid pipelines. It doesn't mean you can't have them but it's a lot less likely. Rhett It's a lot less likely to happen. Mike Just overall. Now if you have a hazardous liquid line and you have pipe that is in that susceptible category and there are some Well, then it's a threat you got to worry about but just looking at it Kind of blended over the whole industry— Rhett It looks a lot like a natural gas problem, but for specific reasons. Chris One of Briefly think about the integrity component of this trial I'll try to softball this once if you've heard any other podcasts you might know the answer to this. So, but can I just have a baseline or a mill hydra testing to be done with this? Mike No. Chris Aren't these stable defects? Come on. This is manufacturing related, right? We hyzer to 1 .25 times MOP and we move on. Mike Yeah, that's right. Chris Let's forget about it. What are we doing here, Mike? Mike That's, that's, that's a big question. And this is, of course, the classic “stable” manufacturing effect that is stable until something changes. Yeah. Chris Well, I didn't change anything. What are you talking about? Mike Right. Well, right. So, you know, and a lot of operators think that way, you know, they're they take a kind of a myopic view about what constitutes operating conditions. They say, well, my MAOP hasn't changed. So, well, there are all kinds of other conditions. Chris The pipe is still the same. I didn't change the pipe- Mike Yeah, exactly. There are all kinds of things that are operating conditions, you know? Temperature throughput, coding condition, cathodic protection levels, external loadings, geohazards, you know, all of these things can change along the pipeline. So there's more than just the MAOP. And the thing about the Hyder test is that it doesn't mitigate against Something that happens after the test. Chris Okay, so I got I got another softball real quick because I'm sure it wants to take a break Can I just run an ILI and be done with this too then? Mike Yeah, that's a great question. And and maybe you can Chris You said maybe maybe Mike yeah, maybe Rhett So maybe the audience can hear this question when we come back from the break because I do want to dive into the role of ILI technology and we glossed over that 1 .25 subpart J hydro test question way too quickly. We come back more with Mike Rosenfeld and hard spots. Rhett So we're back from the break continuing our conversation on hard spots with Mikr Rosenfeld here at PPIM series and it was it was it was great and I have no doubt that the rest of the show You guys are both geared up to ask to talk. It's gonna be great. Chris Well, I actually am quite surprised right apparently these are no longer stable and I can't just hydro them and maybe an ILI work so I'm just not sure we're going with this Rhett Before we even get there I just want to recap for the audience that we had great discussion around susceptibility lots of work Mike that y 'all have done to further improve the susceptibility definition, But Chris got all upset about, and you even talked about it in the presentation, that our desire is to treat these as stable manufacturing defects on the backside of a 1 .25 subpart J -hydro task. And then in the last series, I mean, you talk so quickly about things that can change, but what are the types of things that are changing that are making them not stable? Mike Right, great question. So— Rhett I only ask great questions. Mike What, right, there Well, there are no bad questions. There's sometimes are bad answers, but so it really comes down to what is it that makes these things fail? And the thing that makes hard spots fail is hydrogen. And hydrogen can be generated by cathodic protection systems, especially if you're kind of operating it a bit hot for a long period of time. Hydrogen is also a byproduct of the corrosion reaction. So you can get so the hard spots can get exposed to hydrogen if the corrosion is taking place in close proximity there. So too much cathodic protection or ironically not enough cathodic protection. Chris So let's get this right Mike. So you're telling me that when I'm doing a good job and I finally fight for capital dollars to put in a new rectifier. You're telling me that I'm not doing a good job now. Mike No, not at all. I just made the pipeline worse is what you said. Chris You're solving an important problem. We know what happens if you don't have enough cathodic protection. So you got to do that. But it's possible to inadvertently create another problem. And this is what has caused a lot of the hard spots historically to fail. And So what we saw in the data was that there was a tendency for hard spot failures to occur increasing numbers in closer proximity to sources of cathodic current and not long after those were put in place. And what we see is that when those changes took place, the times to failure after those changes was much, much shorter than the age of the pipeline. And so these are things that were well intended. They're great ideas. They're important. But they had unexpected effects after the hydro test and the hydro test does nothing for you to mitigate against. Chris So are we saying, are we saying that it's okay to put in rectifiers, but we just need to be careful about their output. Mike Sure. Well, so what it says is if you have pipe that has a high susceptibility to hard spots, it's really knowing where these hard spots are I think is a critical part of managing them and we can know where they are from inline inspection. So if you're going to make changes to your corrosion protection then you do want to think about how that whether there are hard spots in an area where you're going to be doing that and you know what's the what's the range of influence? Well, it could be a few miles based on some of this data Rhett So there's a lot of data integration that requires a lot of information on your pipeline susceptibility That's that's that that's really neat So I'm gonna I want to then go into the next question, which Christopher is going to get you all worked up about, but I thought it's another good one is the role of ILI in this. Yeah. So what did you guys find out in the study? Where does ILI fit in line inspection and some of the hard spot tools that are out there? What's their role in managing hard spots? Mike Well, the key thing is it tells you where they are. It's like just like ILI for corrosion. You know, Hydrostatic testing does not tell you about corrosion that's not severe enough to fail in the test. And so, but inline inspection can do that. Well, inline inspection can also do that with hard spots and they can identify where they are and it can give us a pretty good idea of how significant they might be in terms of both size and metallurgical Hardness level. So it's probably the single best way to figure out What what you have and how much of it you have and yeah, you know. Chris So you guys looked at a little bit of I like data obviously some Mike yeah, we did yeah, Chis so pretty generic questions here. It's like Is I like giving you what you think you need to start managing this, you know, we normally think of things in like sizing identification and detection. So they're defining the stuff reasonably. They're identifying them reasonably. And they're sizing them reasonably. Mike Yes. I mean, look, there's scatter. And both on the sizing and on the hardness of levels that they're reporting. We sort of think that hard spot inline inspection today is about where crack detection inline inspection was, you know, a few years ago, 10 or 15 years ago. Rhett That's a really good analogy. Mike And did it get better over time? Yeah, of course. Technology helps us develop all of these techniques. And the vendors, I think, understand that it's important for them to continue to improve. But I do have to point out that our ability to validate the ILI and it can be validated, but our ability to validate the ILI is somewhat impaired by the fact that our in-ditch techniques for examining the hard spots only give us a superficial view of that and it's not Rhett Superficial. What do you mean by that? Mike Well, it's only at the OD surface. Not that it's performed at the OD surface. Rhett The literal definition of superficial. I thought he was going to go a different direction. He meant it literally. Mike Literally, yeah. Yes, of course, it's performed at the OD surface, just like any other inditch examination. But it also can't interrogate the hardness levels and dimensions of that hard spot subsurface or at the ID surface. So the, whereas the ILI tool probably is responding to a net. Rhett It's like a bulk. It's like a bulk effect through the thickness of the material. Mike So the problem is the ILI tool may be indicating a large hard spot with some high hardness level, because that's what's bias toward, it's bias toward the inside. And that's truly the case. Whereas from the outside, we see maybe a much smaller hard spot with a lower hardness. And so from that, then we conclude that-- then a practitioner might conclude that, oh, the ILI is over -sizing these. And that to me is a big problem because it may lead to not investigating things that probably should be investigated. Chris I want to cover a couple of topics just in case some of our listeners don't only listen to this and maybe don't do a little bit of homework. So how many ILI systems did you look at in this paper? One or a couple? Like from vendors, technologies? Mike Well, we got data primarily from, most likely from one, but possibly more than one. The pipeline operators didn't share with us who the ILI vendors were. Okay. So that's kind of one. Chris The other one I wanted to ask is it's we didn't get to like what do you need from the ILI? Is dimensions enough, the geometry of it? Or do you need to know ID versus OD? Do you need to know the hardness value? Do you need like a Bernal calculation? I mean the value presented? Mike All good questions. Well, number one is location. Secondly, hardness level, third dimensions and positioning and I don't believe that right now the ILI systems are able to differentiate between inside and outside it would be nice if that would be a great thing to shoot for but I don't think they're able to do that right now so but that's that's more than enough to be able to prioritize based on some severity metric and – Rhett You proposed one you proposed one in your paper that was another great point in your paper that I had seen Chris So yeah so we have the cool little matrix you know that was presented to us by Keith Lavis right about about basic rupture framework your framework I mean come on you got to have something right how can somebody do a simple calculation to say this matters. Mike Right. Chris Yeah, because I don't want to do fracture mechanics. Mike Yeah. Yeah. Right. I don't either. That's that's too much work. Chris And I don't want to do FBA either. Yeah, I really, you know, I, yeah. Mike Well, so we, we can look at what, what are the factors associated with failures. And we, we see that it's a function of stress level, hard spot, overall dimensions or especially length and metallurgical hardness level and so Well, why not just capitalize on all three and Rhett make a weighted function. Yeah. Mike Yeah, well just multiply them together Rhett And what did you call it? H Mike Hard spot severity index Rhett HSI Mike It's HSSI because hard spots two words Rhett the hussy Yeah. Mike So, you know, it's not a real, it's not a real property. You know, you can't put units on it, but we just multiply percent. Chris Is it not an RSI? Is it not an RSI? Is that not the unit? Mike That's a great idea. Chris It's a Rosenfeld severity index Rhett It is in units of Rosenfelds. So you're sending a new unit. Chris Please put that in your paper somewhere. Rhett I don't know if you want your name attached to this forever. You got to think about this deeply. Mike No, no, I don't. So it just gives us a way of evaluating the severity of the hard spot. And what it appears to do is add a fairly arbitrary value of about 1 ,000 if you're applying it percent S -F -Y -S times Brunel hardness number times the length in inches, add about a calculated value of a thousand that seems to correspond to a pretty low likelihood of a hard spot failing due to a leak or a rupture. So it's not distinguishing between the two. And a relatively low likelihood of digging up things that don't matter Rhett So its hard spot severity index. So it's hardness times percent smite Mike hardness and Brinnell hardness number multiplied by percent SMYS multiplied by the length and so what if you can do them in any order Rhett Look I have kids in grade school now so we go through order of operations I appreciate that so percentage smite. So does it matter if it's an x 42 operating at 60 percent s'mice verse an x 70 operating at 60 percent s'mice, but they didn't probably have x 70 in this time frame. Mike No, they didn't. It was okay. Rhett So yeah, your your vintage kind of controls that Chris His paper also said I think primarily a lot of these were x 52 right. Mike Yeah, a lot of them were x 52 because that's that look that's what people were building 30 inch diameter pipelines out of in 1955. Rhett And that was just, so you pointed to the ditch work. I really appreciate it at the end of your paper. You gave Mike's prioritized listing of where you thought we needed to do future research and you put in the ditch first, which is what I would have put too. There seems like there's a lot of opportunities there in the future for where we take those. Mike But you know, there is one thing I didn't think of to put on the list that I only just sort of thought of this morning. And that is to get – Chris A working projector? Mike Well, that would be a good one. Yeah. Rhett You know, full disclosure, Mike, when you're out there, Mike keeps hitting the back button or something. He must be doing this. And I thought you were totally at fault. Rhett No. Then I got up there after you and I'm like, it's happening to me. And I was like, I was in there trying to like, full proof test it. I know. It's like— Mike I was wondering, did I hit something with my elbow? Because I am real klutz, and I do stuff like that. Chris So what do you think about? Sorry, I didn't mean to do it earlier. Mike So, anyway, the other thing I thought of as a potential research need here is that it would be good to better understand the rate process of hydrogen diffusion into the pipe wall as well as diffusion out so that we can understand how quickly are these changes occurring after something happens, a step change in the CP environment around the pipeline. Chris I want to be more practical. I'm sorry. I'm we're gonna go backwards a little bit So we talked about days, right? Yeah, I'm gonna dig the pipeline. Yeah, and I can't find the hard spot So I can just cover every walk away now, right? MIke Yeah, that that you know, that's a problem anytime you run in line inspection You can't find the thing, you know, it's like, am I am I digging in the right county? Chris But let's be real. Let's say I dig it up and we had this fancy IMU that had great GPS locations and I dig. Rhett Don't drag IMU into this. Chris I dig a good bell hole. 360 inspection. I don't see anything, Mike. Mike Yeah, that's a real good question. Chris Yeah, I can just cover it up because it's an ID feature. I move on. Mike Well, the problem is it might still be a real feature that's present. Yeah, Rhett Yeah, I think you might if you blend it later on. That brings up another issue. Mike Yeah, it's possible. I mean, look, to be perfectly- Chris So I slap a composite on it for good measure. Mike Well, yeah, I'm not-- yeah, a composite's probably OK. I'm more a fan of— Rhett You're making Mike snub here. Mike I'm more of a fan of fully welded type B steel sleeves. Chris Just in case. So just in case the hydrogen diffusion goes through, we have another problem. Rhett So yeah, you kind of gave us your rundown in the presentation. I would encourage those who weren't here. Take a look. He did give his list of where he thinks future research needs to go. Mike, I got a rapid fire scenario for you. So, 'cause since you are an OG, original games during the industry, like highly-- Mike I'm not that old. I mean, those guys were in the '50s. Mike Look, you weren't onthe Sage series, so we're kind of hesitant to call you a Sage, so we're gonna call you an OG. Rhett Mike, I've told you this before, you were revered in the pipeline industry. This is, you may not feel that way 'cause you have a bit of humility about you, but— Mike No, my wife keeps me pretty grounded. Rhett Yeah, so does mine, I got you. Would you rather deal with hard spots or low frequency ERW? Mike -Well, I actually think that they're about, I'm about a par in terms of overall risk level. So-- - Rhett But you only get to pick one which one Chris you have to manage one of them Rhett you're buying a pipeline filled with hard spots or a pipeline filled with low -frequency rw Mike I think hard spots are a lot easier Rhett Check that's what I wanted, hard spots or dents Chris Did you see Rhett’s paper today? Mike Well yes yes and that's exactly what I was thinking about I was thinking Rhett It was not a set up question Mike -dents Rhet 'Cause you did some great work on dents back in the day, too. There's a lot of you develop. – Mike Yeah, pretty much work has passed that by since then. But I think dents are really complicated. I still think hard spots are fairly simple in the big scheme of things. Rhett Okay, he's gonna choose, hard spots are a geohazard. Landslides, Appalachia. Mike So the geohazards are highly localized. Hard spots could be systemic. I mean, you might have 200 miles of hard spots. Rhett So you're taking the hard spots again? Mike Yeah. Well, no. Rhett You'd rather have hard spots? Mike No. The geo hazards probably easier in that it's localized.---- Now, it might be expensive as hell to remediate. Rhatt Got to play God and hold the hillside back. It does get. Okay. Last one. Hard spots or SCC. Chris We know the answer to this Mike Again, I'm gonna go with hard spots. They're easier to find— Rhett Last question in the one that will pit you you will choose either Christopher— Mike Plus you have to do fracture mechanics Chris You can't just use the HSSI Rhett All right, this question will pit either you will choose Christopher and myself and you don't know which one in advance Apple or Google, are you an iPhone or an Android user? Mike No, I am not in the, you know, Apple eco culture or whatever, you know. Chris Are you still on the flip phone? Is that what you're saying? Rhett No. No, it means he sides with me and he's not an iPhone fanboy. Mike Yes, yes, I still have a Motorola. It's five years old and still working. Rhett You're closer to me than you are to, than you are to iPhone. You made me so happy today. Chris No, the last question is this, would you come back? That's the real question. Have we scared you off? Mike No, this is hilarious. Chris No, you would not come back. Rhett He's gonna come back after Michigan wins the national title or when they play U of H. Did y 'all play them like pre -season games or like you don't need a practice team? Mike I don't ever remember that happening. Chris Let's not bring that up. Rhett All right, Mike, I want to say thank you for joining us. It's been a lot of fun. I Mike Yeah, I appreciate it. Rhett To our audience, we hope you enjoyed this episode with Mike Rosenfeld as we covered hard spots. Hopefully it's not the last time we see him here because he does great work in the industry. If you ever get a chance, say hi. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to seeing you again.