Aqua Environmental are the regional representatives for Pure Technologies’ innovative SmartBall® technology for use in trunk main water pipelines.

SmartBall® is an autonomous free-swimming foam ball with an aluminum core capable of detecting and locating very small leaks in large diameter water mains.   The ball travels with the water flow for up to 15 hours, collecting information about leaks over many kilometers of pipeline with a single deployment. The ball can then be extracted under normal operating pressure with a specially designed capturing device.

Due to its unique design, it has several advantages over other leak detection methods:

• There is no generated equipment noise, so it can detect very small leaks.
• Its small size allows it to pass through inline valves, reducers etc.
• Can surveying 25km of pipe in one deployment (if flow rate is 0.5 m/s).
• Only two access points are needed into the pipe, an insertion and extraction point.
• The tracking equipment needed for the survey is lightweight and requires minimal access to the pipe.
• During the survey the sensor actually passes the leak, thereby providing maximum acoustic sensitivity and leak detection resolution .

Aqua Environmetal, in conjuction with Pure Technologies has completed in excess of 40km of SmartBall® survey work in Australia for bulk water providers in mains ranging from 1100mm to 1700mm.