Extremely Durable RFID Tags for Oil, Gas, & Construction

TROI RFID claims that their Armored-RFID tag can be welded directly to a metal part and even continues to read after exposure to temperatures up to 600° F – the highest temperature we’ve seen any passive UHF tag exposed. TROI also challenged us to put their RFID tags to the sledgehammer test, a challenge we weren’t about to pass up.

In this edition of The RFID Network, we’re going to put those claims to the test and see just how tough the TROI RFID tags really are.

In industries such as construction, oil, gas, and petroleum, assets can be exposed to some tough environmental conditions: extreme temperatures and sudden impact. In this edition of The RFID Network, we're going to take a look at the durable-RFID tags from TROI RFID. We’ve been given several to evaluate:

• the PC-100;
• the PC-102;
• the PC-102 Dome;
• the banded Wow tags
• weld-able (not painted)
• and the armored-RFID tag;

These are EPCglobal Class 1 Gen 2 and ISO 18000-6C compliant passive UHF tags all of which are designed for extremely harsh environments such as the Oil and Gas industry or Construction industry. The PC-series are all rubber-encased RFID tags designed to be mounted on pipes and other durable metal assets. There are two basic shapes to the PC-series (rectangular and domed and three basic sizes mini, medium and large). All PC tag shapes and sizes are either supplied as the basic tag or come with stainless steel cables molded-in or with holes that allow cable ties to be added. The mini tags have side slots for metal tie wraps to attach to small pipes. These RFID tags are actually guaranteed for the life of the pipe.  The metal bar version of the PC-102 is used extensively on oil rigs.

The Armored-RFID tag, and its sister tag series the WoW tags, are currently the only metal UHF rfid tags on the market. They are designed to be welded directly on a metal asset. Other on-metal RFID tags are attached using screws, bolts, rivets, or an adhesive.

RFID Tag Extreme Temperature Testing

For the extreme temperature testing, the armored RFID tag still read after being baked at 600 degrees Fahrenheit, that’s 315 degree Celsius. Another Armored RFID tag still read after being welded to a metal plate.  It’s important to remember, the integrated circuit inside the RFID tag is not designed to operate above 185 degrees Fahrenheit or 85 degrees Celsius.  That means you cannot read them while they’re exposed to these high temperatures, but once they cool down, they start working again.  The metal casing protects the IC from the harsh environmental conditions.

Like the Armored RFID tag, the TROI WoW-1 tags can be welded directly to metal or used in a banded application. Many Construction and Oil and Gas companies prefer banding over welding. The banded version is designed for Rapid attachment.  Using many of the bands currently employed in the industry installation is fairly simple. Slide the tags onto the band and secure the band to the pipe as normal. There are various colors and the tag can even be laser etched to include bar code or human readable information. The Wow-1 tags continued to read even when subjected to a flamethrower test.  The insulation in the tag helps protect the integrated circuit so it can continue to read, even under these harsh conditions.

In partnership with the Oil and Gas RFID Solution Group Consortium, the top five oil and gas companies field tested these RFID tags over a 24 month period and found that they survived even the most challenging environments, including

• down-hole,
• sub-sea,
• and high-chemical exposures and treatments applications
  

As a result, they were named the Oil & Gas RFID Tags of Choice for harsh-environment operations.

“We found these tags survived even the most challenging environments, such as down-hole, sub-sea and high-chemical exposures and treatments,” said Sam Falsafi, co-founder of the Oil and Gas RFID Solution Group Consortium.  “They met the needs and standards of the oil and gas industry in real-world settings, thereby earning credibility for RFID applications beyond just supply chain management.  This substantiates RFID’s importance deep into oil and gas exploration, production and refining operations.”

RFID Tag Impact Testing

Nearly all of the durable RFID tags on the market have an Ingress Protection, or IP rating, which is a global standard for durability.  But if you’re tracking assets for construction, oil and gas, or the military, the tags you use are going to get banged up, and that means impact – not just shock and vibration.

We placed our IP-rated durable RFID tag on a metal plate.  In reality, you might not expect someone to actually take a sledgehammer to an RFID tag, but in fact this is everyday practice with pipes in the Oil and Gas industry. We’re also trying to show that when a metal tagged asset impacts something else directly on the tag, the tag may not hold up.  In the construction business, impacts like this are not uncommon when moving assets around.

The international standard IEC/EN 62262 provides a measurable means of testing external impacts. In such tests where IP rated RFID tags were affixed to the face of a 6 kilo sledge hammer and dropped from a two meter height, only the TROI tags were able to sustain hundreds of drops while other tags broke in 5 drops or less.  This is pretty much what we determined in our tests.

In addition to being rugged the TROI core tag inside the encased rubber actually has been tested to over 400°F for months and survived as well as other environmental exposure. What is unique is actually common to the entire electronics industry. TROI uses 100% packaged chips and solder bonding. These are not common for inlay based tags which use raw chips attached to plastic bases by a variety of techniques including conductive adhesive. TROI uses none of these adhesive bonded plastic tags and only Aerospace and Automotive approved standards for electronics “chip on board” designs. TROI raw tags are used within the Oil industry for downhole applications which include >25000 psi and >400°F.

RFID Tag Performance Testing

Our team tested the read performance of TROI RFID tags affixed to metal pipes. In the tests, we used a CS462 stationary reader from Convergence Systems Limited.  The CS462 is Powered by Impinj and uses the same technology as the Impinj Speedway Revolution reader. We attached two different antennas:

• a linear polarized antenna to measure maximum read range when tag orientation is controlled;
• and circular polarized antenna when tag orientation is variable.

For our held-held test, we used a CS-101, also from CSL. We performed a battery of tests that measure the read distance of these tags at all different angles.  To accurately measure the read distance, we’re going to use a professional-grade laser distance measure.   Place the laser dot on the face of the tag and with the press of a button, we have an accurate distance measure with a precision of 1/16. It also accounts for angles and open spaces between the reader and the tag that a standard tape measure cannot.

For our benchmark tests, we tested the PC-100 on lumber, the PC102 and PC102 dome as well as the weldable Armored RFID tag where tested on metal.

In our fixed position reader tests, we read the PC series tags between 5 and six and a half meters away, up to 21 feet away.  While the Armored RFID tag read nearly 2 and half meters away, about 8 feet.

Using our CS101 hand-held we read the PC 100 on lumber over 6 meters away, about 21 feet.  While the PC 102 tags read between 3 and four meters away, almost 13 feet away.  While the Armored RFID tag read just under a meter away, about 3 feet.

Overall we find these read ranges extremely respectable given the size and extreme durability of the tags.

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