Articles
Who
Oxems (Oxford Electromagnetic Solutions) has developed a tag and sensor technology that uses an extension of radio frequency identification and detection (RFID) and passive low-frequency tags to give buried plastic pipes a unique frequency domain ID like a barcode.
Technology
The pipe’s location and this code, which provides immediate information on the type of service carried as well as providing access to remote data related to the asset, can be detected from the surface using the new locator.
The system is designed to be cheap and robust and to require low maintenance. It is also designed to withstand wet conditions to enable the location of water leaks.
Application
There are around 4 million kilometres of buried pipes and cables in the UK, with around 100,000km of cast iron gas main considered at high risk of failure and in need of replacement.
However, buried plastic pipes are difficult to detect. According to Oxems, detection equipment is expensive, inefficient and inaccurate. Oxems claims its tagging technology can be used with all kinds of buried infrastructure, including water, gas, power, and telecommunications, and could reduce the costs to roadworks by at least 40%.
Professor David Edwards of the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford University led the Oxems founding team. He says: “We started working on the problems industry faced in this area, which led to the frequency domain barcode approach. Our previous work in underwater pipe detection enabled us to model the response from wet environments and develop the technology.”
Kevin Gooding, CEO of Oxems, says: “The intelligent part of the technology is on the surface, so that the buried tagging units are simple, leading to significantly reduced unit costs as well as increased reliability and longevity. It also means less street work disruption for the rest of us, with no more dry holes where a contractor digs a hole but finds nothing."