Project Details

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Large Valve Inspection Probing Camera

Company: WSSC Water

Major(s):
Primary: ME
Secondary: EE

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: YES

The WSSC Water is a bi-county, public water/wastewater utility in Maryland that was established in 1918. For over 100 years, WSSC Water has served the communities of Prince George’s and Montgomery counties providing life-sustaining water and water resource recovery services to individuals, families and businesses. WSSC Water maintains and repairs approximately 12,000 miles of buried pipes and several dozen facilities to provide water services to its community. WSSC Water relies on large diameter pipelines to move water across its service area. The pipes, referred to as “transmission mains” vary in size from 24 inch to 96 inch in diameter. The amount of water flow and the ability to isolate and drain segments of a transmission main is controlled by large valves. WSSC Water needs a method/devise to visually verify that a valve has fully closed when needed for maintenance of the pipeline. The PSU teams will design, develop and prototype a devise that would use a probing camera that can be inserted into ports of the pipeline to visually determine valve position (see attached photos). This devise will need to be waterproof, battery powered, pressure resistant, durable, portable and self-lighted. All these aspects of the design will need to be worked into a compact housing that will pass through the pipe’s port and into the water stream within the pipe. Sealing the port after insertion will be needed to prevent release of water from the pipe. The PSU team will have freedom to develop the image display configuration such that a user can easily view the cameras display on a screen. Movability of the cameras view will also be a challenge the team will tackle such that the camera can see multiple angles of the valve. The project will allow WSSC Water to continue to provide a highly reliable water source to approximately 2 million customers by allowing WSSC Water employees to properly verify valve position and facility regular maintenance on our transmission mains.