Electro Scan to test leak scanning technology in Milwaukee

The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) has approved a project by Electro Scan to test its patent-pending technology to locate and quantify unwanted rainfall-dependent infiltration (RDI) sources in Milwaukee, US.

The project was proposed by Brown & Caldwell, a national engineering consulting firm, in association with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and City of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

As part of the project, previously inspected sewer laterals will be evaluated by electro scan technology to find leaks in them.

Electro Scan chairman and CEO Chuck Hansen said the company has been successfully testing electro scanning against CCTV in sanitary sewer mains by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"Now it’s time to have an independent source verify electro scan in sewer laterals against legacy dye flood and CCTV inspections – a classic bake-off," Hansen added.

Electro Scan measures the variation of electricity passing through defects in the wall of non-conductive pipes, including brick, cement, clay, plastic, reinforced concrete and pipe liners, to locate and quantify defects which may include cracks, joints, service connections and manholes.

The company’s smartphone application will automatically receive the data, which will then be transmitted to a hosted cloud computing application, CriticalSewers.com.

Electro Scan recently delivered its first electro scan unit to Christchurch, New Zealand, where it has already found leaks in sewer drains that had previously gone undetected.