On April 8th, the "Four-All" pipeline welding inspection robot technology equipment system independently developed by our country was put into large-scale application, significantly improving the construction efficiency. This marks a leap from "segmented manual welding" to "all-terrain automatic welding" in the construction of long-distance pipelines in our country.
The "Four-All" pipeline welding inspection robot equipment system has broken through the technical equipment bottlenecks of automatic welding in terms of pipe diameter adaptability, terrain complexity and weld diversity, achieving full coverage of pipe diameters ranging from 33mm to 1422mm and full adaptation to complex terrains with a slope of no more than 30 degrees. The fully automatic welding and fully automatic ultrasonic (AUT) welding inspection of all joint types, including straight pipes with joints and straight pipes with hot-bent pipes, has ushered in a new era of zero-gap pipe alignment, 100% solid wire automatic welding of all joints and all weld layers, and fully automatic ultrasonic (AUT) welding inspection.
In the past, the welding of oil and gas pipelines mainly relied on manual welding and semi-automatic welding, accounting for 80%. This traditional welding method has problems such as high labor intensity, high construction cost and unstable welding quality. To address these challenges, the Pipeline Bureau has established 15 science and technology projects and independently developed the "Four-All" pipeline welding inspection robot equipment system. Welders can carry out automatic welding with the help of the remote control box, which greatly reduces the labor intensity of welders. In the construction of the East African crude oil export pipeline, the one-time pass rate of the "Four-All" pipeline welding inspection robot equipment system reached over 98%. The amount of welding material used at each end of the pipeline dropped from 2.9 kilograms to 1 kilogram, and the amount of oil used decreased from 30 liters to 10 liters. Carbon emissions and smoke dust emissions were reduced by more than 60%.
At present, the "Four-All" pipeline welding inspection robot equipment system has been widely applied in domestic projects such as the China-Russia Eastern Pipeline, the West-East Gas Pipeline III, and the Sichuan Gas Pipeline II, and has been certified by Total of France and Saudi Aramco. It has been fully utilized in the East African crude oil pipeline and the Saudi Aramco pipeline project.