Adding some heat to flow assurance...

Four years back in time, the engineers of Amek Technology discussed the possibility to create a subsea installable insulation system based on environmental friendly components.

This spring the same engineers injected MERGEL™ into the connection box of a Flow control module and temperature rose more than 20°C ... water depth was 1350 meters offshore Angola.  

Increase flow, decreasing hydrate formation risk.

Amek Technology AS is the “little sister” of the Aalesund – Norway based Liaaen Teknologi AS, part of the Strata Marine & Offshore Group.

Project managers Elisabeth Brattum, MSc and Magne Iversen, BSc started this particular project mid summer 2007. The system they were responsible to design needed a carrier for the insulation gel MERGEL™ and a system to inject the gel into the FCM box.

All this including a capacity of minimum 500 litres needed to be fitted inside a ROV skid for easy operation. Service manager Helge Bodin together with Aberdeen based company Argonaut Marine and our project team managed to design and build a functional, easy to operate, ROV carried Subsea Insulation System – SIS™.

Our offshore team, responsible engineer Bjorn von Essen and Supervisor Carlos Castro, were in charge for the offshore operations carried out onboard the Bourbon Jade.

Water depth at site was 1350 meter and the subsea operation was mobilized out of Luanda – Angola. It took an average of 30 minutes to inject 430 litres of MERGEL, increasing the product temperature with 20°C in just a few hours, maintaining this for the next five years.

The SIS combined with our MERGEL is a cost effective, easy to install and environmental friendly subsea insulation system. The SIS is a flexible system which can be used on a variety of subsea components, such as clamp connectors, bare metal spots for ultrasonic inspection, large valves etc.

It’s easy to deploy, easy to remove and easy to re-install, all done by any type of Work class ROV, no large and hard to handle components or equipment.

HPE™, the next generation of the SIS™.

Project manager Magne Iversen is not resting on good achievements, together with colleague and senior engineer Odd Karlsen at Liaaen Teknologi AS he has started to develop the next generation of the SIS.

HPE – Hydrate Prevention and Evacuation is an enhanced system development where the system has been combined with a heat source making it possible to melt hydrate plugs in a controlled manner. Senior engineer Odd Karlsen says: “It’s very important to use our R&D competence and long experience in flow assurance to handle the hydrate melting processes. During such operations it’s crucial that the expanding gas is vented to the sea in a controlled operation to avoid hazardous conditions which could cause serious accidents.”

The new HPE system has special features to control these very hazardous conditions and to prevent dangerous situations, the main system is based on the SIS core technology and is ROV operated. It can be used at any depths and it’s a reliable and safe system.

If the main focus is flow assurance and hydrate prevention, SIS™ and HPE™ are the tools of today and tomorrow.