Meeting Minutes

5/6/2004 General Meeting Sophie’s Station Attendance – 20

The meeting was called to order at 12:05 by Chair, Ed Bargar.

Ed asked for self nominations from the group for the executive committee positions. Interested parties can become involved by directly e-mailing Ed.

Frank Caito presented the Treasurer’s report, stating the group has approximately $11,900 between the checking and savings accounts.

Deben Das presented an Outstanding ASME Service Award to Paul Park for organizing the February professional development course. Vijayagiandeeban, a graduate student from the student chapter, was presented the ASME Outstanding Student Service Award for his service helping Dr. Das with the membership petition drive to help the group advance to a sub-section.

Dan Hughes shared results from the professional development course evaluation. The comments were all very positive, with a few course improvements that included a longer class and more comfortable chairs. Ideas for other courses included ASME B31.1, B31.3, Section VIII, NACE corrosion course, crane safety, mechanical systems overview, and an in-depth study of cold temperatures and charpy impact testing.

Dave Hackney from Alyeska Pipeline Service Company presented an overview of Alyeska’s pipeline pigging program. Dave has worked for Alyeska since 1983 and has been instrumental in developing and testing the corrosion pigs. As a system, Alyeska has four pipelines, from Pump Stations 1-4, 4-Valdez, 8” fuel gas, and 10” fuel gas. Alyeska uses three types of pigs: cleaning, geometry, and corrosion detection. Cleaning pigs are used weekly to every two weeks and before corrosion pigs are run. The geometry pigs are ran every five years or when needed such as after the earthquake in 2002. The geometry pigs measure bending radius and pipe ovality. It was interesting to note that the earthquake was actually good for the buried pipe and reduced pipe stress by realigning the pipe bed. The instrument pigs are used for corrosion detection and run every three years. The UT pig is a good pipe wall thickness measurement tool, but can miss defects. The eddy current pig is better for defect detection. Both pigs store data collected on board and can only be downloaded once out of the pipe. Dave explained most defects have been external and caused by coating failure. Internal corrosion is almost non-existent. Alyeska has been a leader in the industry as far as developing inertial navigation and UT technology to detect as low as 10% corrosion loss. Dave explained how pigs are bypassed around the pump stations, check valve clappers are locked open for the instrument pigs, and how the pig’s location is monitored.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:15.

Paul Park

Secretary, Northern Alaska ASME Group