”Why Clean Clean Pipes ?” Sydney Water Trial of SL-RAT

Abstract

”Why Clean Clean Pipes ?” Sydney Water Trial of SL-RAT The SL-RAT is a new innovative technology introduced to the Australasian market by Austeck Pty Ltd in 2014 and developed by Infosense Inc in the USA. The SL-RAT sends an acoustic tonal pulse down the pipe and in less than 3 minutes makes a blockage assessment and assigns a score between 0-10. Some of the many features and benefits of the SL-RAT is that the assessments are conducted with no confined space entry, no flow contact, is cost effective and is very simple to use. The SL-RAT is also equipped with GPS for data labelling, data registration and test validation. The Sydney Water SL-RAT trial results have shown that nearly 60% of our cyclic cleaning program consisted of clean pipes not requiring any further cleaning. Why clean clean pipes? The results also show that the SL-RAT scoring system closely aligns with the Conduit Inspection Reporting Code of Australia (CIRCA) scoring system and the SL-DOG software and that GPS is better than 80% accurate to 10m.