The Scottish-based inventors of a globally successful environmental technology for the offshore oil and gas industry have perfected the next generation device for launch later this year.
Developed on the Orkney island of Flotta in Scotland’s far north, the ‘Mare’s Tail’ has been snapped up for use by oil giants across the world, from the North Sea to the Far Eastern Pacific
Opus Plus, who employ 20 people on Flotta, have developed the new device in a research partnership with an Aberdeen university.
The Mare’s Tail cleans up water discharged as by-product from oil and gas production units operating in locations including offshore UK, Indonesia, West Africa and Brazil.
The higher-performance technology addresses ever-tightening international restrictions on oil levels left in ‘produced water’ – liquid brought up along with oil or gas – when discharging it back to the sea.
Chemical-free and self-cleaning, the device is unaffected by movement, which makes it particularly suitable for floating production, supply and offloading vessels (FPSO’s). Already, it is in daily use on fixed and floating installations by companies including ExxonMobil, Total, Hess and BP America.
Named after the appearance of its central fibre core, the Mare’s Tail ‘coalescer’ pulls together tiny oil droplets in the water, to form larger accumulations that are more efficiently removed. On average it can improve the oil removal efficiency of downstream separation equipment by 20–30 per cent, helping operators to meet their regulatory discharge targets of less than 30 parts per million of oil in water.
The Opus company, made up of research, analysis and development arm Opus Plus in Orkney and Opus Maxim in Guildford, Surrey, who provide process optimisation, installation and other oil and gas services, have been perfecting the latest version for two years and plan its market launch in September.
The device’s effectiveness is boosted particularly when coupled with another Opus innovation, their ‘Compact Flotation’ technology, in which oil droplets are picked up as film on tiny gas bubbles produced to collide with them.
The enhanced version has been developed at the Opus Test Facilities, in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University, and will now undergo field trials with oil producers.
Engineering Business Manager at Opus Plus, Glen McLellan, said: “The Mare’s Tail exemplifies how we continuously develop our technologies to stay ahead of the field and this process won’t stop here.
“Though we are a comparatively small company, our expertise is matched by ambitious plans for the future. We, and the fast-growing energy sector in Scotland’s Highlands and Islands, have an exciting future at home and across the world.”
In addition to the ’coalescer’ technology, Opus provides solutions to a range of process needs for oil and gas producers, including fluids analysis, process upgrades and marine ecotoxicity testing to protect the environment.