Patent ID: 7197914

Claim:
A method for locating a hole in a fluid flow system, comprising the steps of: (a) injecting at a first location an interactive tracer into a fluid flow system containing the hole; (b) drawing a small vacuum on the fluid flow system to pull in any of the liquid or gas contents released from the pipe in the immediately vicinity of the hole; (c) removing the vacuum to allow the contents pulled back into the fluid flow system to remain in the approximate vicinity of the hole; (d) allowing the tracer sufficient time to interact with the contents pulled back into the fluid flow system; (e) advecting the tracer along the flow establishing an advection flow field; (c) extracting the tracer at a second location in the flow system; (d) measuring the concentration of the extracted tracer over a period of time; and (f) locating the hole from the measured tracer concentration.