Thermally Powered Autonomous Water Leakage Detection System for District Heating Pipes

This article proposes a simple, low-cost, low-power standalone system for detecting leaks in district heating networks, employing time-domain reflectometry (TDR) powered by a twin-pipe temperature gradient. The proposed platform was implemented and experimentally validated through field measurement. The TDR-based leak detection results demonstrate a high level of accuracy with a positioning error of less than ±0.55 m and prove the feasibility of using wireless LoRa-based communication between a drone and the detection system. It uses thermoelectric generators (TEGs), harvesting energy from the temperature difference between hot and cold pipes in the twin-pipe structure. It draws 16.5 mA from a 5-V source during the active mode and consumes an ultralow standby mode current of $30~\mu $ A. The system is set up every 12 m and sends data wirelessly to a central hub or a drone. This smart leakage detection system makes it faster, easier, and cheaper to monitor and maintain a district heating network.