Episode Transcript
Rhett Dotson: On our PPIM 23 Art dealing with technology providers. We talked to Mr. Ron Thompson of Novatek today. You're going to get a little bit about how that technology developed and how he is a master of naming things and a little bit of Latin.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah. New. This is new technology.
Rhett Dotson: Yes. Fabulous. In fact, we might have him name some stuff for us here at D2 Integrity. Yes, great. It's great. It's a great episode. We hope you enjoy it.
All right. Welcome to PPIM 23. We are Pipeline Things here. Shooting live. You know, Chris, we didn't do the whole walk. We do it. We didn't do the whole, like, high five thing. Yes, I'm your host, Rhett Dotson, my co-host, Christopher de Leon. So we are doing something pretty exciting here at PPIM.
Christopher De Leon: Little bit different.
Rhett Dotson: Little bit different, yeah. There's going to be a guest with us on every one of the PPIM series, and I'm pretty excited about our first guest, who we'll talk about in just a little bit. But before then, I want to set the stage by saying that we had to get help.
Christopher De Leon: We made this work.
Rhett Dotson: Yeah, we made this work with the help of a lot of people behind us.
Christopher De Leon: Get help.
Rhett Dotson: Yes. We often tell our clients to get help. Let's just say Christopher and I had to get we got help because this booth, these amazing life size cardboard cutouts.
Christopher De Leon: If you weren't here, you'll see pictures on LinkedIn.
Rhett Dotson: Yes, the pictures on LinkedIn. There are life sized cardboard cut outs of Christopher and I that are true to scale that you can take a photo with. All of that was the result of ADV marketing. The ladies over there, they really did.A fabulous job.
Christopher De Leon: And PPIM. Tracy, we called around, we try to get a conference room to figure this out. And between, you know, B.J. and Ben, and Tracy, they set us up with this great spot. It's convenient for all the ILI suppliers to come over and spend some time with this. Our records. Hats off to you guys.
Rhett Dotson: It is. And, you know, the only the only downside to all of this.
Christopher De Leon: I don't know if it's a downside.
Rhett Dotson: The event was pretty public to have miss producer at it. So we kept Ms.. Producer under wraps. She's in a bunker, hidden somewhere in an undisclosed location and so that nobody tried to grab her up and they try and do their own thing with her because we need her and the ladies at ADV marketing here, they said we have we have our friend, second string, Sarah, second team behind me.
Christopher De Leon: You know, it makes me it makes me think of like San Francisco 49ers with Purdy, you know, where he had some momentum. We're going to see how this goes. Maybe she's going to take me to the Super Bowl.
Rhett Dotson: Remember that Alabama game where they brought in two and he came back?
Christopher De Leon: That's right. I mean, didn't they take Jalen hurts out? Oh, I don't remember the details on that. And that was a while ago.
Rhett Dotson: Miss producer we love you. We'll see you again when we get back. So. All right. I think it's going to be time to introduce our guest? So the guest we have today is going to be Mr. Ron Thompson from Novatek. Yep. And as he comes on, I'll say that we are super excited about talking to him. We'll be right back.
All right. So our first guest, Mr. Ron Thompson, president and overtake. Ron, thanks for joining us today. Will you introduce yourself to the audience? Tell us a little about yourself.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Sure. Thank you very much. First off for inviting me. And it's a pleasure to work on this podcast with you. And yeah, so if you want me to give you a little background or history where I started, but my journey has not been particularly short, I started in the mid-nineties with Pipetronics.
Christopher De Leon: No IPP for you.
Guest (Ron Thompson): And VII and in the early 2000s for a short term. And then I had another company called Intertek, which was sold to Baker Hughes in 2011. Yep. And I spent three years at Baker Hughes until early in ‘15 and went out on my own and partnered with Campo, CPC to form Novatek. Nove is in Latin, which means new, new technology.
Christopher De Leon: Ooo, nove, that's good. Yes, well, in Spanish.
Guest (Ron Thompson): And thank my late wife for that. She spoke many languages, including Latin. So that's all she came up with the name.
Rhett Dotson: Why didn’t give us a cool name in Latin?
Christopher De Leon: I'm working on it. I'm working on it, trust me.
Rhett Dotson: You named us D2. I mean, we could have I don't know.
Christopher De Leon: I'm thinking about a software name. Our software name is going to have a lot of Latin swag to it as well.
Rhett Dotson: So given that so you obviously know a lot about ILI, this is going to be really fun.
Guest (Ron Thompson): I’ve spent more than 30 years, yes.
Rhett Dotson: You spent 30 years? That’s longer than my entire career in ILI, so this is going to be fun. So, Ron, I kind of mentioned to you one of the reasons when we chose guests for the series that we're doing is we wanted to choose guests that our clients are interested in. And I told you probably I without hesitation, we get more questions about the Micron technology from Novatek than probably any other technology.
And people are always asking me, they're like, Rhett, have you run them? Have you used them? Have you ever had experience dealing with them? Can they really do this? I mean, all these series of questions, certainly. And so it's honestly, it's impressive. So kudos to you guys. But one of the things that you guys are doing is from the outside is dealing with MFL technology fairly established, I would say.
And y’all appear to be doing things that nobody else is doing, circumferential FCC. What's the secret sauce? What separates you guys?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Well, I'll kind of go through it in order maybe from how the company was created. So when we had an opportunity in mid 2015 to create a new company, build new technology, we didn't want to just kind of make status quo and we decided to go for as higher resolution as possible with both AMFL and CMFL and build a modular design.
We have ten standard configurations from a basic geometry, high resolution geometry tool all the way up to what we call a version ten, which we run very often liquid lines with everything on one to all AMFL, CMFL, CIDD, SM technology, which will expand upon it a little bit. I knew of course. Yeah, and that allows a very comprehensive data set.
Now if we have to run two separate tools, we can combine the data as well. So whichever is suitable for a customer's pipeline, we can accommodate.
Christopher De Leon: So I want to jump in. I mean, the first question that you'll often get when you talk about a convol tool is they always assume it's caliper. IMU and MFL, but it sounds like you're able to do both your MFLA and your MFLC in a combo configuration?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes, that's correct. Yes.
Christopher De Leon: That's that is nova. That is NOVATEK.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes. And as the name implies, we wanted to build a much higher level of technology and some of the sampling density you may have read about. Yeah, you know, we like to break it down into samples per square inch because that's fairly easy to understand. So we can go over 600 with AMFL, we can go as high as 1000 with CMFL.
You combine it with all the other sensor technologies, we can interrogate every square inch up to 2000 samples of four or more data sets.
Christopher De Leon: You know, that made me think of something, Ron, which is something I think a lot of us are familiar with. When you said 600 per square inch, that makes me think of like your printer.
Rhett Dotson: Yeah, that’s the PPI.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah, that’s exactly what it makes me think about, that's fantastic.
Guest (Ron Thompson): People are always talking about spacing and sampling rates, but you have to multiply the two together and calculate the effective area. This is just a simpler way to talk about it.
Christopher De Leon: It also makes us think about profiles, right? Because that's often what we want to look at. We want to look at the shape of things right and the dimensionality of these things. That's a great way to present it.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah. So when you go into these high sampling densities and by the way, we don't use any data compression, which is an ongoing. Yeah, it's eventually being weeded out due to large memory devices now. But a lot of companies we're using pretty heavy data compression.
Rhett Dotson: So when you say data compression in my mind, help me understand that because is that where the tool only records data if it's above a certain threshold and they're dropping the data?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Most of the data compression routines were of that simpler? Okay. Yes, LC data compression. So why is that important? Well, if you're looking for very small things, which could include cracks, pinhole corrosion, small details of complex corrosion, having all the samples, not throwing them away any of them is very important because there are some of those little details actually are the ones you need to know to make a diagnosis, a characterization of the flaw types.
Christopher De Leon: That also sets you guys up for more advanced analytic techniques, right?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes.
Christopher De Leon: If you have all the indications, you can run different routines, different pattern recognition, softwares, you know, it gives a room for developing different algorithms.
Guest (Ron Thompson): For a performer of opportunities on these complex and small things like cracking within holes that might not have otherwise been achievable with older technology that I've worked with as well in multiple companies.
Rhett Dotson: So I'd like to ask a pragmatic question because unfortunately, even in the new regulation that came out for 192, we see the term high resolution used. Yes. And you're using a term resolution. It feel honest. It feels like every vendor says their tool is high resolution. They help me understand on the scale of resolution, where where's this Novatek technology?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Well, we'll go back to the sampling density per square inch and start with the AMFL, because it's the most common one. Most of the other companies are probably order of magnitude less than us. Well.
Rhett Dotson: Wow, so you said it was 600?
Guest (Ron Thompson): 600 samples per square inch. Most of them are sub 100 for sure. There is maybe one other competitor that's probably approaching 200, but the rest are all below 100.
Christopher De Leon: So we think of like eighties. We were in standard reds, got into the late nineties, early 2000s. You start seeing high res. Yes. Now the common language is ultra is that what you guys with Micron.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes that's the difference. We're with Micron for a couple of reasons. One was to distinguish ourselves from the others, but Micron implies we're looking at thing on a microscopic level, which includes the cracks of course. So it seemed natural that we would use a, a descriptor like Micron to explain this ultra beyond ultra.
Christopher De Leon: Sets things and sets things aside.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Resolution, if you will.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah.
Rhett Dotson: Did you think of the name Micron too?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes.
Rhett Dotson: I’m thinking like do you offer your services?
Guest (Ron Thompson): The word Micron has been around forever.
Rhett Dotson: But you incorporated it into the name.
Christopher De Leon: It’s the application.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Micron technology is a trademark that we have that's also registered.
Rhett Dotson: Yes, I think let's get this guy’s help.
Christopher De Leon: You know.
Rhett Dotson: Like reach out. Hey, Ron, can you name our software for us with your help here?
Christopher De Leon: Yeah, there has to be a round component to it.
Guest (Ron Thompson): It's important to identify yourself and people recognize it. And I'm glad that I-
Christopher De Leon: Yeah, brand identity right?
Guest (Ron Thompson): You guys are listening to that Micron is being asked?
Rhett Dotson: Yeah, when people ask Micron you associate it with Novatek, It's really good. Whereas I like that because you hear ultra-high resolution or high resolution it's there's two or three times.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah, right.
Rhett Dotson: So I like how you said you started with the design of the tool because that feeds very well into my next question I wanted to go. So you guys doing circumfrential SCC is really pretty novel. Did you guys sit around the table and say, Hey, we want to target circumfrential SCC?
Christopher De Leon: That's the question I wanted to ask too.
Rhett Dotson: Or was it a result of having the technology and suddenly y’all started realizing, wait we actually think we can see this and it kind of evolved organically. Was it a strategy or organic?
Guest (Ron Thompson): I’ll explain the origins and it was. It was not on our own. The director of Xcel Energy from the Integrity Group, Ray Gardner, approached us and he said, we have a certain torrential cracking problem. Would your new technology, with all the sampling density, be helpful? Now, he has a very strong nondestructive testing background, as well as being an engineer, and he's worked with Imad.
He knows ultrasonics, he knows flux leakage. So he already had more of a scientific background than many might have, right? Yeah. In more traditional engineering backgrounds. So I said, Well, we're not very confident that we would be able to detect the cracks, but we'll certainly try If you send us by to our research facility in Toronto, we'll pull test it and we'll give it a good try here, like we'll see what we can do.
So I remember that very well because when we did our first set of pull tests, it was late on Friday. I'm looking at the data, our head of analysis is looking at the data, and I'm seeing several of the cracks that were we knew where they were on the pipe, obviously, because we match particles and we knew exactly where they were.
And I said, I think we see the cracks. So we kind of formed a circle and said, are we really sure? And then we went back and measured by again, made sure that we're actually seeing the cracks. And then we go and I called Ray Gardner that afternoon before the end of the day, and I said, Ray, we can see-
Christopher De Leon: Good news!
Guest (Ron Thompson): We can see that we're. That we can see the more significant cracks. And that was the early beginnings, if you will. And he was he was just ecstatic about it. And he said, Oh, fantastic. So we completed our pull testing. We published our very first paper here at PPIM on that subject that that was in ‘16, I believe.
Rhett Dotson: ‘16, I think I remember when it came out.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah. So that was the beginning of working on the circumferential cracking problem. I think even before we called it Micron ILI Technology, which would come out around that time.
Christopher De Leon: And the great thing about that is it's you solved the problem, which is neat, right?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes, now I believe we have it solved and I want to include off and go cracking because this is a relevance to not all the cracks are perfectly circumfrential. They follow the spiral, take photographs. Sometimes they can be misaligned by more than 20 degrees.
Rhett Dotson: From the circumfrential?
Guest (Ron Thompson): From perpendicular to the magnetic field.
Rhett Dotson: Perpendicular to the magnetic field.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Magnetic field, Yes. So why is that important? Because UT has a fantastically sensitive technique for cracks, but it needs very good alignment. And I think most published materials say they have to be no more than ten degrees. Misaligned. Yeah, and I've worked to that precise a lot, so it's very obvious. That's probably correct. So we can be a little more robust, so we can gather up ones that are more off angle and the frequency what we find the off angle cracking is nearly half the time. Right. Which is not known before.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah.
Rhett Dotson: So when you detected the cracks that afternoon, were you surprised?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Somewhat surprised, yeah. But there would be more surprises because we also thought you can't go, you can't go that fast. The velocities, you know, because the gas systems run pretty fast. So we thought maybe we'll will be limited, it'll be too slow, maybe sub two meters a second.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah.
Guest (Ron Thompson): But we found through exhaustive testing and now live runs so we can run as fast as five meters a second. A lot, which is a big difference.
Christopher De Leon: Which is neat. Right. And that's why so many operators rely on the robustness of magnetics. Right? Yes. At least, let's be clear, MFL based magnetic tool, that's kind of the robustness of line debris, velocity excursion. So it's like all that fun stuff. So it's neat to see that ported over.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes. And makes it more practical.
Rhett Dotson: So this is a great point. I'm loving you here. We want to dive into some other places where NovaTech's going. But before we do that, we're going to take a break and hear from Ben and B.J., our sponsors of PPIM. We'll be right back.
B.J. Lowe: B.J. Lowe here, with Clarion Technical conferences. And if it's February, it must be PPIM, We're here. That's right. For the 35th time in Houston, Texas, starting in 1989. Here we are, 2023 with another record-breaking turnout for the world's largest pipeline technology related event. We've got almost 3500 people coming through for four or five days, almost 200 companies exhibiting on the trade show floor, another sellout.
It's not too early to begin thinking about 2024. We sell out around June or July. So clarion.org is where you go to sign up and we hope you can join us for the next conference if you're not here this year. Another big part of the conference is our training and education program, which take place on the Monday and Tuesday of the week.
And this year we have eight really, really great courses, world class instructors and almost 300 people showing up for these specialized courses on different aspects of pipeline integrity technology. I'm here with Ben Stroman, a colleague at Clarion. Hey, Ben.
Ben Stroman: Hey. Doing good. Always happy to be here because it's, as we say, PPIM season. It's February. So I would like to remind everybody that we also have a very specialized technical conferences associated with PPIM. And this year I'm proud to say that we have the largest conference program that we've ever had, it has 94 technical papers that were chosen from a large selection of submissions that were very high quality.
So we're very pleased to be putting on these 94 papers during the week. I'd also like to mention that we do have online training. If you aren't able to make it to PPIM each year. We present online training throughout the year. You can check more of that out at clarion.org and we hope to see you in one way or another online or in person.
And if you're not here, the 35th version of PPIM. I hope you’re here at the 36th.
B.J. Lowe: Definitely.
Rhett Dotson: Hi. Welcome back. Yep, and second string Sarah made it happen and oh, you're doing it.
Guest (Ron Thompson): You're going to be first string very soon, Sarah.
Rhett Dotson: Woah, miss Producer. We love you. We love you, Miss Producer. So. So, Ron, you really did a great job setting up how you guys developed the technology and then found out its ability.
Christopher De Leon: It's like an origin story.
Rhett Dotson: It was. Are you going to write a book later?
Guest (Ron Thompson): A memoir.
Rhett Dotson: Yes. My time. Well, we'll see. You can tell Jerry Rell, by God, if I if I was in charge, this is how I'd do it. And you could.
Guest (Ron Thompson): You know, I guess we wanted to make an impact that changed the industry, if we could. And that's sort of the premise of starting the new company and building this kind of technology in the first place and taking it to see how far we can go with it, because the industry does need help. Their shortfalls, particularly in the areas of crack detection, complex corrosion.
Christopher De Leon: And when possible, with ILI, right for the other data integration capabilities, Right for risk management, planning.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah, yes, yes.
Christopher De Leon: And all that fun stuff.
Rhett Dotson: So going back to our conversation about the circumferential SCC and the development of the tool, you mentioned that, you know, you guys have all of the technologies, all one combo tool, which is kind of a that is unique, but B, I'd like to understand if you're willing, help us explain how important are all of those technologies in the identification of circumferential SCC? Do you guys rely on all of them, or is it really just that high density circumferential or axial?
Guest (Ron Thompson): Well, in all the in all the crack areas, if we if we have the three primary data sets which would be AMFL, CMFL, IDDSM, sensor data. These things give us the high PODs and POIs on the circumferential cracking. We're running in the mid-nineties for POD, POI, which is maybe I'm not the custodian of all the records, but it might be in the highest order so far for crack, for circumstantial cracking.
So those are very, very solid numbers. A lot of the other technologies are sub 80. Yeah. And, and have a lot of mis missed calls or false positives. So we're very reliable.
Christopher De Leon: Are you guys, I want to jump in. Are y’all specific to any type of like a crack aperture at the surface or anything or are you guys a little bit agnostic today? It's kind of like-
Guest (Ron Thompson): Well, crack opening from when I early in my early days of Pipetronics was stated that it had to be 100 microns, and we're all told that. So we didn't question at the time. But through our research with Xcel Energy and now with many other operators, we can reliably go down to 25 microns or 1,000th of an inch crack opening.
So that was believed to be not in the physics for MFL. That's what a lot of people stated, but we've proven that to be false.
Rhett Dotson: Yeah, that's a hint. Hints why people often say what you're doing is impossible. So that's really cool.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah, so and we have an abundance of metallurgical evidence to support that. And we published the four papers that deal with that subject matter.
Christopher De Leon: And just for the listeners and the viewers, right? I mean, the idea behind MFL is it's when you have metal loss, i.e. a gap or missing materials where you have the flux leakage. Right? And so the idea has always been you have to have a minimum threshold of material loss so that you can detect any type of flux leakage, which is where data compression and all these come into play.
And basically what we're saying is it's the all technology challenges that right where yes, it truly gets closer like a hairline crack versus it being something more like a gross hook crack. Right. Or a corrosion has begun to create a larger surface gap or surface aperture.
Guest (Ron Thompson): So the volumetric component is a contributing factor to the signal response.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah.
Guest (Ron Thompson): But with this higher resolution, it's not as limiting a factor as was believed in older generations of MFL technology. So that's a that's really a big change.
Christopher De Leon: Coming back to Rhett's question a little bit, maybe some insights on, you know, if it's circumferential in nature, do you just need an MFLA? Is it the combo tool? Is it all three? Talk to us about that.
Guest (Ron Thompson): So the A is used to detect the cracks. The IDDSM sensor technology is used to also detect the cracks and confirm that it is a crack. Yeah, we use the amplitude needs of both of those signal responses in ratios and comparisons and algorithms to predict the severity. The CMFL all is used in this case. So, because we're talking about circumferential cracks, to rule out other false positives to give us higher PODs and POIs, because in the end, really the customer really appreciates that degree of reliability and because of the cost of digs and investigation.
Christopher De Leon: They might not know what they're going to find. They're pretty sure it's going to be circumferential cracking, but they need to find something.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah. So the CMFL data would be used the same way. If we're looking at seam flaws, we'd use the AMFL to say this is not selective seam wall corrosion. This is a lack of fusion or a crack. And you know, we categorize and characterize things based on that combination of AMFL, IDDSM technology, so.
Christopher De Leon: It makes me want to know what else they can do.
Rhett Dotson: What I kind of like about this is as I'm hearing this, like you develop a technology and when it's different, I think you start to find out what it can do and you guys haven’t really limited like, I like that you could have started and said, Look, no, we can't do that. That could have been the answer, right?
No, because this technology, it says theoretically it's impossible. But instead, you just say, let's see what we can do. And then you don't know. I think when you have a tool sometimes and it's not you don't know what it can do until you try it.
So in that in the incorporation of those different datasets, to the extent you're willing or want to answer, how important is the analyst in that? Right? Because some people will try to differentiate themselves as saying, Hey, this is a process that you really can't replicate because you got to have the training, the analyst or is it is it rooted in AI or what's the role of the analyst that you got? Is it a very manual labor-intensive process?
Guest (Ron Thompson): It's an interesting question because that would be one industry position. But you need these super experienced analysts. But when you have all these data sets, you're piecing a puzzle together. And in some ways it gets easier when the analyst has more information first to diagnose what it is, know what is the characterization of that flaw. But then second to that is what is the severity?
So in many ways that I think it becomes easier. Although training is required, it's helpful if you have a background even in AMFL before you start. Well, we've trained many analysts from scratch that don't come from this industry. Yeah, and it's amazing how well they progress. We are not fully automated yet. We're more of a semi-automated process on the cracking portion of it.
Yeah, and that may come in time, but we're not quite there yet. But there's obviously some runway there and in other approaches, AI could be used, perhaps.
Rhett Dotson: I often in my own experiences, Ron, I'm actually glad to hear that because I think sometimes the reliance, my own personal opinion on A.I. can be a bit of a challenge. It has its place, but usually where AI struggles is on the most critical features. Those are the ones that I feel like you really have to dive in the most is like where the consequences of being wrong are the ones where it struggles the most, which makes it.It's a long.
Christopher De Leon: Yeah. There's also no other way to say that, right? Also as it relates to outlier management, right? So we have all three data sets or an algorithm that has certain requirements, kind of like you said, data compression in this case maybe thresholding or signal recognition. The idea of having an analyst still very integrated into that process allows a bit for finding the stuff that maybe the algorithm or routine could miss.
Right? They see certain patterns and they're able to help with that, what I'll call outlier management right now.
Rhett Dotson: All right, let's rapid fire this because I want to be respectful of Ron’s time as we get back into heading towards the papers. So we'll see what's in the future. You're going to Rapid-fire.
Christopher De Leon: Okay. What's in the future? So short?
Rhett Dotson: That’s not for me, you're asking Ron what’s in the future.
Christopher De Leon: Okay, the future. So obviously you guys have it seems to be select a simulate corrosion down pat. Y’all have a great technology.
Rhett Dotson: Wait, have we talked about selecting single corrosion?
Christopher De Leon: Select or no, circumferential. So the question goes to is it's what about select seamless corrosion?
Guest (Ron Thompson): It's being developed too, and we believe we're going to have very good solution that's reliable, but we're improving upon it. Now, we have quite a few lines we've done and good candidates. We're getting results in. It's steadily improving. It's a it's challenging. It varies a lot. You know, some of it is more general corrosion, some of it is more isolated.
The isolated part is much easier when it's embedded in general, corrosion gets more difficult. We're working on it.
Christopher De Leon: Trying to find the selective component to it.
Guest (Ron Thompson): We also just want to mention this, that the IDDSM sensor technology may be a safeguard against missing the really severe flaws of this nature. Because if we narrow axial corrosion, selective corrosion is extremely deep, we probably will see elevated stress around that body of work has not been done yet. Yeah, but judging by the cracks we expect to see some similar responses.
There's another way to safeguard that something didn't get missed.
Christopher De Leon: Sure.
Guest (Ron Thompson): And that we can include it. We will continue to work on that.
Christopher De Leon: You know when we think of and to whatever, you know, however you would like to describe it, when we think when we hear things like IDDSM, that makes us want to think Novatek. Can you elaborate on what IDDSM stands for? Is it stresss-
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah, the IDD part was the original acronym, if you will, and that was for internal depth detection.
Christopher De Leon: Okay, yeah sure.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Once we started measuring stress around cracks, we hyphenated it and put SM on the end. For stress measurement.
Christopher De Leon: So it was IDOD discrimination. And now there's a stress component.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yeah. Features and internal corrosion direction in the beginning. Yeah.
Christopher De Leon: So select to seam wall corrosion that's being worked on. What about.
Rhett Dotson: Axial SCC?
Christopher De Leon: Axial SCC.
Guest (Ron Thompson): See that's the next big thing. Obviously a very, you know, important to the industry and we're actively working on that now. We have pretty good collaboration with several operators that are going to give us lines to work on. We have some examples here at PPIM. If you gentlemen want to see later. Yeah. On axial cracking in full testing, we're showing that we have good responses with CMFL and we are going to probably increase the resolution of the IDDSM sensors for that application.
Now that they become long and narrow, we will need a higher sensor density and maybe a-
Christopher De Leon: Maybe like your like your MFL type configuration.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Yes, maybe with more of a custom design for the axial cracking problem. But that's a big area we want to work on, yeah.
Rhett Dotson: So that's the last one. Material properties.
Guest (Ron Thompson): That's also another Xcel Energy initiative with ourselves. So we're working hard on that for about a maybe half a year we've been working on it I would say. And early signs are we're doing quite well on it. So our caliper tools can measure the bore with a half millimeter accuracy that tells us what the wall thickness is, because that's always a variable that can get fouled up from one step in wall thickness to another.
And by analyzing primarily background values with AMFL, we're also looking at CMFL. We can separate 42 from 52, obviously 42 from grade A and B. So we're working on this and it's showing some promise. I think that yeah, we'll be able to help a lot in this area.
Christopher De Leon: One way for us to think about it then is it's POD and POI but maybe not sizing, right? So it's not so much saying like we're measuring the greater the smice.
Guest (Ron Thompson): That's correct.
Christopher De Leon: But rather we're saying we're identifying because of the characteristics this is x 42.
Guest (Ron Thompson): As an example. That's right. Got it. It falls into that category or one higher, One lower.
Rhett Dotson: All right. Well, I am getting the signal from second string Sarah. She's telling me we need to wrap it up. I want to say thank you so much.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Sarah, you’re number 1.
Rhett Dotson: Thank you, Ron, for joining us from Novatek.
Guest (Ron Thompson): Thank you very much, guys. Really appreciate your time today. A busy week for everybody. So.
Rhett Dotson: Yeah. And we appreciate your time. Yeah, we do look forward if you guys are going to be here next year when I reach out to Mr. Ron Tom from Novatek, you've heard a great episode and we will be back in two weeks with someone else from PPIM. Thanks for joining us.
