Monday, 03 March 2014 06:18

TECHNOLOGY - Enter the flying drones

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Air space above process facilities in the oil & gas, power generation is increasingly being visited by unmanned flying devices sent to monitor conditions that would be much more difficult to check from the ground or vessels at sea.

Academics at the University of Aberdeen are the latest to join this 'high' tech approach which is in growing demand among oil & gas and power plant operators, including at the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan.

Working in collaboration with a group at the University of Bergen in Norway, the Scottish team is using remotely operated flying machines to scan rock formations in remote areas of the North Sea.

Drilling a well in the North Sea, enables companies to directly measure the rocks in the borehole, Given, though, that two wells are often miles apart, it is difficult to predict what the rock layers in between the boreholes look like.

A drone, however, can collect large volumes of data from otherwise inaccessible cliff sections in remote and often dangerous places.

The work is part of a project called SAFARI which features the use of laser scanning to create virtual rock formations that are accurate to within less than a few millimetres.

The spider-like helicopter vehicle used in the project costs around £10,000 and is remotely operated using radio controls and carries two cameras which allow it to collect stereo, 3D imagery.

“We look at similar rock units which occur in cliffs above sea level and we use the drone to make extremely detailed 3D models, which we can then adapt for the subsurface," explained professor John Howell, a geoscientist at the University of Aberdeen.

"This gives us a much better idea of what conditions are like between these two bore holes and then allows us to predict how the oil will follow and how much we can recover.

"As the drone can make extremely detailed 3D models, we can then adapt for the subsurface to give a much better idea of what conditions are like between two bore holes."

The research work in the SAFARI project is supported by 24 oil companies seeking to build better models of the subsurface and improve recovery from oilfields. The next phase, which will be the first to fully utilise the drones will start later this year.

Cyberhawk survey manager Stuart Thomas presented at the recent ESRI European Petroleum User Group conference alongside Shell. The presentation highlighted work completed for Shell using our fixed-wing and multi-rotor UAVs.

Another recent convert to the technology is Shell, which has started using UAVs to acquire aerial data was to enhance Shell’s emergency response capability by having highly detailed and up-to-date aerial imagery for its sites.

The energy company engaged CyberHawk carry out aerial inspection and surveying using remotely operated aerial vehicles (ROAVs) whether it’s a close visual inspection of a live flare stack, flare tip, live transmission tower or topographic land survey from the air.

The inspection was completed despite a 250m exclusion zone around the mast due to worries about its structural condition.  
Cyberhawk conducted the inspection with a two man team operating from a supply vessel. The team collected hundreds of high definition images of the mast and completed a detailed report on its structural condition.

This allowed the client to gain a valuable assessment of an otherwise unreachable asset. The ROAV inspection saved the client hundreds of thousands of pounds, as a jack-up was not subsequently needed.

Cyberhawk’s met mast inspection compliments a range of other innovative services for the renewables sector including wind turbine blade, tower, transition piece and transformer platform inspections.

Another pioneers in this field is Honeywell, which supplied its T-Hawk micro air vehicle (MAV) to help emergency workers at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility get up-close video and photos inside the plant as they battled radiation releases.
 
Weighing just 17 pounds, the T-Hawk is a ducted-fan vertical takeoff and landing air vehicle. Pilots can determine manual or autonomous flight paths from up to six miles away for up to 40 minutes at a time.

Three Honeywell employees, trained to fly the unmanned T-Hawks remotely, flew five missions and captured hours of video and dozens of photos of the nuclear reactor. The four T-Hawks in service at Fukushima Daiichi have been adapted to carry radiation sensors.
 
The T-Hawk features a hover-and-stare capability that enables pilots to hold it in one place and zoom in on features inside the damaged reactors while the T-Hawk sends live video and still images back to recovery workers.

The T-Hawk also is capable of sending live in-flight video feeds to help workers focus on critical areas and adjust direction mid-flight. Pilots can control T-Hawk cameras to alter angles and get better views of damaged equipment. Just 14 inches in diameter, the T-Hawk can be flown into tight spaces where humans and other aircraft cannot go.
 
“The T-Hawk reminds us that innovative technologies initially created for defense purposes can find crucial roles in humanitarian and disaster recovery efforts,” Mahoney said.
Read 6869 times Last modified on Tuesday, 18 March 2014 18:13