7 Things a Drone Inspection Can Do That Manual Inspection can't

Drone inspections can lead to safer, more efficient, and more cost-effective inspections. Regulatory bodies require regular inspection, which can help prolong the asset life cycle. It can also inspect the impossible areas where hard to reach this is the parts of facilities.

7 Things a Drone Inspection Can Do That Manual Inspection can't

1. Test The Activity While Visual Monitoring

The project can be inspected visually by the convection center of a furnace to look at the shock tubes and check the asset for leaking.

Visual inspections using drones by the corrosion and leaking which are normally carried out in person and the facility is out of use. It is impossible to have someone physically present during a test scenario as the level of risk is unacceptable.

What are the unique things bout this project the team utilized the fly ability visual inspection drone to inspect the visual and active hydro test on the underway which can’t be possible with a traditional inspection. These can allow them to collect the data remotely without any considerably lower risk.

2. Cooling Tower Inspection

Cooling towers can have to inspect regular internal inspections for signs of wear, damage, or corrosion. This process can require careful management because the cooling towers are very large, tall structures, and inspections are typically associated with significant downtime.

In this case, the drones enabled a four-bay cooling tower to undergo that internal visual inspection with minimal impact on its operations. This facility has been turning off the fan in one bay which can leave the other three operational. The inspection team can fly the aircraft inside the cooling tower bay, do the inspection, and fly out.

This process was incredibly efficient because the facility couldn’t shut down the whole system. This tower has provided cooling support because the team would only put one of the four bays at a time.

3. Augmenting Human Inspection

Every inspection is a partnership between inspectors, assets, and inspection tools. The visualization inspection drone can augment an inspection by providing access to dangerous areas which means inaccessible parts of an asset, while humans work in better areas and we have to use the information provided by the drone to assess the structural integrity.

In this project, the inspection team can use one of our drones to capture the top of a rank as well as its ladders and supports. When we are not using drones inspection team has to build the rolling scaffolding, which is expensive, and spend considerable time on the asset. When we use drones they can decrease the risk of human injury from falls or refractory lining failures. The inspection team got to see just what they needed to see the asset and completed a successful API570 inspection without putting themselves at unnecessary risk.

4. Inspecting unreachable parts of the facility

An indoor drone was used to inspect the infrastructure of the World Waterpark and Mindbender roller coaster in West Edmonton Mall(WEM). The inspection team should examine the facility more thoroughly than ever thanks to our drones which have the unique ability to fly in condoned spaces. They saw things that they had never been able to access before, even with scaffolding, as the parts of the infrastructure were difficult or downright impossible to inspect manually.

WEM personnel can also find that their remote visual inspections made the process faster, safer, and more economical. Using the drone they cut inspection times from 10-20 to just 1-2 hours which can reduce costs by more than 80%.

5. One-off, last-minute stop checks

Pampa Energía, Argentina is one of the largest independent energy companies, which was interested in switching from manual to remote visual inspections for the regular maintenance checkups of the boilers used at their power plants.

Traditionally, Pampa Energía personnel can climb scaffolding to enter each of the boilers and inspect visually the burners inside using a flashlight. Building the scaffolding would take two to three days to put up and two to three days to take down.

Elios 1 which was tested at Pampa Energia’s power plant in Bahia Blanca, the original plan was to inspect one of the two boilers on site. Within 20 minutes. The visual inspection drone managed to collect enough visual data for a full boiler inspection which is much faster than the company’s seven-day manual process.

On a whim, Pampa Energia was asked if it would be possible to inspect the second boiler as well since there is the first inspection that had been so quick and there was plenty of time left in the day. The burners in that boiler were under two years old, so the team did not expect to find any issues.

The remote visual inspection revealed that the burners were in a very bad state. Pampa Energia can not choose to even restart them as doing so risked damaging the entire asset and compromising personnel safety. As there is the issue was discovered before the burner's expiration date. The warranty was still in force, and Pampa Energia was able to recover the full costs.

6. High-resolution imaging capture by using a drone

You are ready with the latest cameras, the drone can capture high-resolution photos and videos by providing details and accurate visual data which manual inspections might miss, especially in areas with poor visibility.

7. Real-time data provided by drone

The drone can transmit live video feeds and real-time data to the inspectors on the ground. You are immediately enable to analyze and decision-making without the need for inspectors to physically reach the inspection site.