Pipeine technologies have nuclear applications
– By Mark McFadden –
Profile Technologies, Inc., the developer of patented, proprietary electromagnetic inspection methods for identification of corrosion on pipelines, reports diversified and new interest in the Company’s enhanced products.
The Company is currently in contract negotiations with established pipeline inspection service providers that would allow for our inspection services to be resold in the United States and abroad. Working with service providers would allow Profile to offer its technology to the end user by utilizing pre-established client relationships and offering the EMW-C within a suite of other inspection services. It further allows us to branch out to new industrial clients including the power and nuclear sectors. Early negotiations have already yielded new prospective contracts for the Company which we expect to continue to evolve as these agreements solidify.
Recent marketing efforts by the Company have created new opportunities to work with several oil refiners across the United States to introduce the EMW-C inspection tool for location of corrosion under insulation and other problems on plant pipelines. Last week the Company demonstrated the capabilities of its newest generation of EMW-C equipment in a refinery in New Mexico and more meetings are being scheduled with other refineries for the coming weeks.
“In the last two months we have experienced a significant increase in customer interest and requests,” commented Robert Geib, the Company’s Chief Operating Officer. “Our recent efforts to reach out to pipeline owners and operators with information and demonstrations of our technology have been met with positive response and we are confident the new opportunities generated will result in positive growth in 2009.”
In addition to our existing inspection service offerings, an alternate use for the EMW-C is gaining recognition in the gas and oil industry to provide long term monitoring of pipelines in wax-filled road crossings. The wax-filled crossings provide additional corrosion protection for buried pipelines but still require regular inspections which could be performed using the EMW-C. The Company has been invited by two leading pipeline industry groups to take part in initiatives that will include our monitoring technology toward the development of an industry recommended practice and possibly regulatory guidance.
The Company has been invited to perform tests for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in April to introduce its existing external corrosion inspection capabilities, as well as the newly developed internal inspection method to the electric power industry representative. The Company believes the internal inspection method provides a unique and rapid inspection capability for pipelines in addition to heat exchanger tubes commonly used in power plant facilities. The internal inspection method is technology recently patented by the Company that was developed by modification of our existing technologies. This allowed for considerably lower design costs for a product that will target an even larger market than the existing EMW-C. Future generations of the internal tool will allow for live monitoring of the pipe and heat exchanger tubes without removing the systems from service.