The discovery of leaks from natural gas pipelines

Nowadays, energy use has increased dramatically in Iran. Gas is one of the most important energy resources. Gas use will grow in future and its pipe lines are quickly developing. The length of this gas distributing network reaches thousands of miles, so validating and timely defect detection in each part of pipe line is important and essential. The present article reviews current technology of leakage detection in pipe lines and points out the role of remote sensing and aerial methods in this detection.
In the first section, different leakage detection methods applied on gas pipe lines are shortly reviewed and the second section focuses on optical methods and applying remote sensing and aerial methods with the aim of decreasing costs and time of leakage detection in vast areas. Finally, different methods of leakage detection are compared in the conclusion.