Losses due to leakage in steam transport plants represent a huge waste of money and environmental impact in refineries and plants that have heated systems. Leaks occur due to corrosion of the pipe walls and failures in components such as valves and traps. A steam leak directly results in waste in the consumption of treated water and fuel consumption for heating water.

Currently, the inspection of leak points along kilometers of pipes is carried out by human local inspection with the aid of portable measuring equipment. This causes problems in relation to the time required to carry out a full inspection of the plant, implying only intermittent analyses. Furthermore, on-site inspection exposes the technician to accidents and puts the plant's operational safety at risk.

The MISS system - Mixed Inspection Sensor System - consists of a high redundancy network of sensor systems, employing technologies for measuring temperature and vibration such as distributed fiber optic sensors and infrared cameras for monitoring assets in real time.

Distributed optical sensing systems perform continuous and simultaneous monitoring of temperature and acoustic signal (Distributed Acoustic and Temperature Sensing – DATS) over tens of kilometers of an optical cable, with the optical fiber internal to the cable being the sensor element itself throughout the entire its extension, with spatial resolution of up to 1 meter and high sensitivity. The system uses standard optical telecommunications cable, and its installation is low complexity. The sensing provided has wide, dense and permanent area coverage, with little or no need for maintenance.

In specific locations, such as valves and trap banks, infrared imaging cameras are installed. Distributed sensing equipment and cameras are connected to a wireless network and send data and receive parameters from local servers or the cloud.

The MISS system detects and quantifies events based on temperature and vibration parameters. The data generated is processed using pattern identification algorithms, such as machine learning, and image processing to generate real-time information and historical trend analysis, allowing decisions for maintenance, risk and loss mitigation, promoting thus increasing operational security, energy efficiency and the digital transformation of the most diverse environments.