Recently, the subsidiary of China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau (CPP) took the lead in use of  small-diameter automatic welding technology in station construction.

It is reported that automatic welding technology has been widely used in the construction of large-scale and long-distance pipelines between China and Russia as well as the middle section of West-East Gas Pipeline III.With its advantages of good welding quality, high efficiency, outstanding welding shape and low labor intensity, the automatic welding technology has achieved good economic benefits. However, in the process of station installation, wide range of welded pipe sizes, wall thicknesses and grades make the construction process more complicated. Till now manual welding process is widely adapted , while the construction efficiency is quite low due to high labor intensity and uncontrollability of weld quality and consistency. Aiming at the characteristics of station construction technology the company has vigorously carried out the research on automatic welding technology and developed a high-efficiency way called small-diameter automatic welding technology.  It helps the pipeline bureau to fill the technical gap in the application of automatic welding in station construction.

Compared with the traditional manual welding process, the new technology not only increase the prefabrication depth of the station to more than 70%, but also reduce the construction personnel by 30%.The controllability of welding quality has been up to more than 90%. Till now 760 welding process  has been accomplished in station construction, with its pass rate of RT and UT rays over 98%.

Source: www.chinapipe.net