Assessing the risk of hydrate plug formation: a new probability and management tool

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 477
Author(s):  
Zachary Aman ◽  
Bruce Norris ◽  
Michael Johns ◽  
Eric F. May
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Water Concentration ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Flow Assurance ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hydrate Plug ◽  
Plug Formation ◽  
Low Dosage

As production moves towards harsher operating conditions, the conventional strategy of complete hydrate avoidance may not be economically viable. In the past two decades, the development of new technologies, such as low-dosage hydrate inhibitors and active pipeline heating, have enabled new management strategies where limited quantities of hydrate may be allowed to form without endangering the flowline. While this strategy may result in cost savings for long-distance tiebacks, its success hinges on accurate predictive capabilities for hydrate formation and transportability. In this extended abstract, the authors present a new freeware Hydrate Flow Assurance Simulation Tool (HyFAST), where the risk of hydrate plug formation can be directly predicted in subsea flowlines for use in flow assurance concept selection and process engineering. This tool is based on deterministic hydrate plug formation stages—including phase dispersion, hydrate growth rate and particle agglomeration—developed in the international engineering community in the past 20 years. HyFAST expands this conventional paradigm by introducing a new probabilistic engine to account for dynamic hydrate nucleation. This expanded capability enables flow-assurance engineers to directly quantify the risk of plug formation as a function of: flowline length; insulation thickness; produced water concentration; the amount of thermodynamic inhibitor injected; and, the amount of low-dosage hydrate inhibitor injected. An open discussion of all models and assumptions underlying the tool is presented, and the use of this tool to quantify hydrate plug formation risk is demonstrated.

Subsea Electrification: Is the Tide About To Turn?

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (09) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
Judy Feder
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Technical Conference ◽  
Product Line ◽  
Base Case ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Carbon Reduction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Intelligent Wells

The concept of a standalone production system on the seabed with automated wellbore construction and production processes has been an industry goal for a long time. Electrification of subsea facilities and of wellbore and reservoir equipment offers many opportunities to improve operational efficiency, reduce life-of-field capital and operating expenses, and reduce carbon footprint, among other benefits. Talk of a subsea electrification revolution being “just around the corner” has been ongoing for more than 20 years. And, millions of dollars in investments and numerous joint industry projects (JIPs) over the past decade have moved the vision closer to fruition (Fig. 1). But the upstream industry continues to lag others in replacing hydraulics with electrics. The reasons echo those for slow uptake of other new technologies and methodologies—fear of change, the unknown, and failure. Now, recent events are stirring up interest and expectations. “Four to five years ago, only a very small percentage of the buying community were making big noises about the future state of the electrified subsea or subsurface,” said John Kerr, subsea production systems and technology director for Baker Hughes, in a recent interview. “During the past 18 months the narrative has increased rapidly with many more operators looking at electrification as the base case for subsea solutions. We’ve seen a groundswell of interest to the point that we now see 3-, 5-, and 7-year lookaheads with electric solutions as the base case design concept,” Kerr said. What has changed? “Electrification of subsea devices has always been a solution to solve specific technical needs,” said Kerr. “The predominant one was extreme long-distance stepouts, where once you get to 250 miles or so, the ability to pump hydraulic fluids through small umbilicals presented so much pressure loss that it became impractical to implement a hydraulic solution, so all-electric became the solution of choice. Now we are seeing much more understanding of what electrification can deliver in the commercial and operational sense. “During the last 2 years, there has also been rapid adoption of dialogue around the aspect of increased carbon credentials and carbon reduction as an advantage,” Kerr continued. “The interest is much more comprehensive, driving different behavior in concept selection for operators.” Has the pandemic played a role? The consensus of participants in a subsea electrification panel at the virtual 2020 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) was that unless you’re surrounded by a crisis, you’re not encouraged to change. “The moment you put someone in a crisis situation, they understand that they have to change,” said Rory Mackenzie, leader for subsea electrical technologies at Total. “2020—the pandemic, oil price collapse, and environmental issues—this created a crisis. People are now much more open to considering change.” The panelists included Alvaro Arrazola, completions engineer, Chevron, North America Upstream; Glenn-Roar Halvorsen, project manager subsea all-electric, Equinor; Christina Johansen, managing director, Norway, TechnipFMC; Samantha McClean, intelligent wells technical advisor, BP; Rory Mackenzie, head of subsea electrical technologies, Total R&D; and Thomas Scott, global product line director, intelligent production systems and reservoir information, Baker Hughes. Edward O’Malley, director of strategy and portfolio, oilfield services, Baker Hughes, moderated the session.

Technology Focus: Subsea Systems (August 2021)

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (08) ◽  
pp. 48-48
Author(s):  
Birger Velle Hanssen
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Hydrate Formation ◽  
Gas Production ◽  
Sensor Technology ◽  
Flow Assurance ◽  
Detailed Knowledge ◽  
Oil Viscosity ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Produce Water

Flow assurance in subsea oil and gas fields often presents significant challenges. Every field has its own combination of difficulties, and no universal process or system can be used to mitigate these. Detailed knowledge across a broad range of competencies, therefore, is required to find solutions that can minimize the risk of not getting the hydrocarbons safely to the process facilities. Many subsea fields that are being developed today are long tiebacks, taking advantage of existing offshore infrastructure or producing directly to shore. These developments must deal with the long-distance transport of hydrocarbons in deep cold water, commonly increasing the risk of hydrate formation and wax deposition, for example. In addition, large elevation changes from deep water to surface and topographical challenges along the pipeline can create flow-regime effects that can hinder production. The loss of temperature in a long subsea pipeline also creates challenges for fields that produce heavy oil because the oil viscosity in some cases increases dramatically at low temperatures, in addition to effective viscosities increasing because of oil and water emulsions. Other phenomena such as scale deposition, foaming, sand production, erosion, and corrosion must be considered and dealt with as well. Various smart-technology innovations for subsea oil and gas production contribute to reducing the risk of these flow-assurance issues. Some of them are described in this month’s selected SPE papers. A good example is as follows: When wells start to produce water, the operator needs to understand where the water is coming from and quantify volumes in order to start a mitigation program to avoid hydrate formation. This is one of the reasons why subsea multiphase flowmeters have become an essential feature in all new subsea fields. The most common remedy for flow-assurance problems is probably the use of chemical additives. A sensor technology that can directly determine the ratio between produced water and chemicals such as monoethylene glycol has been recently introduced in subsea production systems. This measurement enables the optimization of chemical-injection rates, thereby contributing to significant savings in capital expenditure (reduced design margins) and operational expenditure (reduced overdosage margins). Another effective way to prevent hydrates and wax is to keep the process temperature above critical limits by applying active flowline heating. New technologies for highly reliable and efficient subsea electrically heat-traced flowlines have recently been qualified, industrialized, and installed. Technologies as described here can play an important role in future subsea field developments. The recommended readings for this feature date back further back in time than usual, but are relevant to the theme of this year’s main selections. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. OTC 29232 Real-Time Subsea Hydrate Management in the World’s Longest Subsea Tieback by Christophe Vielliard, OneSubsea, a Schlumberger Company, et al. OTC 31078 Electrically Heated Trace Flowline on the Ærfugl Project—A Journey From Product Qualification to Offshore Campaign by Guy Mencarelli, Subsea 7, et al. SPE 195784 A New Flow-Assurance Strategy for the Vega Asset: Managing Hydrate and Integrity Risks on a Long Multiphase Flowline of a Norwegian Subsea Asset by Stephan Hatscher, Wintershall Norge, et al.

COMBINING ORAL TRADITIONS AND BAYESIAN CHRONOLOGICAL MODELING TO UNDERSTAND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE GULF OF PAPUA (PAPUA NEW GUINEA)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chris Urwin ◽  
Quan Hua ◽  
Henry Arifeae
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulf Of Papua ◽  
The Village

ABSTRACT When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.

scholarly journals A Practical Experience on the Amazon Alexa Integration in Smart Offices

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 734
Author(s):  
Răzvan Bogdan ◽  
Alin Tatu ◽  
Mihaela Marcella Crisan-Vida ◽  
Mircea Popa ◽  
Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Business World ◽  
Office Environment ◽  
The Voice

Smart offices are dynamically evolving spaces meant to enhance employees’ efficiency, but also to create a healthy and proactive working environment. In a competitive business world, the challenge of providing a balance between the efficiency and wellbeing of employees may be supported with new technologies. This paper presents the work undertaken to build the architecture needed to integrate voice assistants into smart offices in order to support employees in their daily activities, like ambient control, attendance system and reporting, but also interacting with project management services used for planning, issue tracking, and reporting. Our research tries to understand what are the most accepted tasks to be performed with the help of voice assistants in a smart office environment, by analyzing the system based on task completion and sentiment analysis. For the experimental setup, different test cases were developed in order to interact with the office environment formed by specific devices, as well as with the project management tool tasks. The obtained results demonstrated that the interaction with the voice assistant is reasonable, especially for easy and moderate utterances.

scholarly journals Therapeutic Advances in Oncology

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 2008
Author(s):  
Jinsha Liu ◽  
Priyanka Pandya ◽  
Sepideh Afshar
Keyword(s):  
Small Molecules ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Treatment Options ◽  
Current Treatment ◽  
Bispecific Antibodies ◽  
Gene Therapies ◽  
Therapeutic Modalities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Drug Conjugates ◽  
Novel Targets

Around 77 new oncology drugs were approved by the FDA in the past five years; however, most cancers remain untreated. Small molecules and antibodies are dominant therapeutic modalities in oncology. Antibody-drug conjugates, bispecific antibodies, peptides, cell, and gene-therapies are emerging to address the unmet patient need. Advancement in the discovery and development platforms, identification of novel targets, and emergence of new technologies have greatly expanded the treatment options for patients. Here, we provide an overview of various therapeutic modalities and the current treatment options in oncology, and an in-depth discussion of the therapeutics in the preclinical stage for the treatment of breast cancer, lung cancer, and multiple myeloma.

The Future of the Planetary Trust in a Kaleidoscopic World

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Edith Brown Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resource Degradation ◽  
Shared Goal

Today, it is evident that we are part of a planetary trust. Conserving our planet represents a public good, global as well as local. The threats to future generations resulting from human activities make applying the normative framework of a planetary trust even more urgent than in the past decades. Initially, the planetary trust focused primarily on threats to the natural system of our human environment such as pollution and natural resource degradation, and on threats to cultural heritage. Now, we face a higher threat of nuclear war, cyber wars, and threats from gene drivers that can cause inheritable changes to genes, potential threats from other new technologies such as artificial intelligence, and possible pandemics. In this context, it is proposed that in the kaleidoscopic world, we must engage all the actors to cooperate with the shared goal of caring for and maintaining planet Earth in trust for present and future generations.

Experiences of Knowledge Transfer on Industrial Heritage Using Games, Storytelling, and New Technologies

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Andrés López ◽  
David Checa Cruz
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
3D Modelling ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Industrial Heritage ◽  
Urban Economic ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Value

The industry has a relevant spatial and socioeconomic importance in most of the Spanish cities and nowadays is one of the main urban economic activities. However, in many situations, and despite recent advances in the past two decades, industrial heritage is a value that is still not sufficiently widespread in society. The factories, their activity, and their historical evolution are often disconnected and isolated from the daily life of the cities, being quite an unknown aspect for most of the citizens. This contribution presents the result of various experiences of knowledge transmission on the heritage value of industry, through the use of games and storytelling technique as an educational tool and the combination of different technologies (3D modelling, videomapping, virtual reality) as useful tools to spread the explanation of this phenomenon.

scholarly journals Selecting sorting centres to avoid long distance transport of weaned beef calves

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Morel-Journel ◽  
E. Vergu ◽  
J.-B. Mercier ◽  
N. Bareille ◽  
P. Ezanno
Keyword(s):  
Negative Impact ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Beef Calves ◽  
Long Distance Transport ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Distance Transport ◽  
French Beef ◽  
General Concern

AbstractThe transport of weaned calves from cow–calf producers to fatteners is a general concern for the young bull industry due to its documented negative impact on the welfare, health and performance of the animals. These transfers are often managed by intermediaries who transport weaned calves to sorting centres, where they are grouped into batches before being sent to fattening units. In this study, we present an algorithm to limiting these transfer distances by appropriately selecting the sorting centre through which they must go. We tested the effectiveness of this algorithm on historical data from a French beef producer organization managing 136,892 transfers using 13 sorting centres. The results show a decrease in the transfer distances compared to the historical record, especially for the calves travelling over long distances (− 76 km, i.e. 18% on average for the 33% longest transfers). Moreover, the distribution of calves between the sorting centres proposed by the algorithm reveals differences in their efficiency in minimizing transfer distances. In addition to its usefulness as a management tool for the daily transport of cattle, this algorithm provides prospects for improving the management of the sorting centres themselves.

Archaic Origins of the Lowland Maya

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon C. Lohse
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Late Archaic ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Radiocarbon Data ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Lines Of Evidence ◽  
Lowland Maya

The earliest Lowland Maya are commonly recognized by permanent architecture and the appearance of pottery. However, when other lines of evidence are considered, strong continuities with late Archaic populations can be seen. Reconciling these views relies on more than simply gathering more data. It is also necessary to consider the effect of decades of scholarship that defines the precolumbian Maya as “civilization” rather than considering the historical contexts of important transitions, such as the one that culminated with sedentism, the adoption of new technologies, and participation in long-distance exchange. The Archaic-to-Preclassic transition was relatively brief and largely obscured by the practices of establishing permanent dwellings. Nevertheless, this period must have been extremely dynamic and marked by significant cultural change, making it important to researchers interested in early Mesoamerica. Using three lines of evidence—subsistence, economy and technology, and stratigraphically controlled radiocarbon data—this article argues that the Lowland Maya had their cultural origins at least in the late Archaic and that the case for pottery before ca. 1000 B.C. remains uncertain. Future research is needed to determine precisely how far back in time certain cultural practices that characterize Preclassic and Classic Maya society can be documented.

New technologies and new policies: the ICRC's evolving approach to working with separated families

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (888) ◽  
pp. 1455-1479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Dubois ◽  
Katharine Marshall ◽  
Siobhan Sparkes McNamara
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Rapid Rise ◽  
Changing Environment ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Policies ◽  
Humanitarian Work ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractThe field of humanitarian action is far from static, and the ICRC has worked over the years to evolve and respond to changing needs and changing circumstances. The past several decades have seen a proliferation of humanitarian actors, protracted, complex conflicts, and the rapid rise of new technologies that have significantly impacted how humanitarian work is done. The ICRC has been continually challenged to adapt in this changing environment, and its core work of supporting separated families – through restoration of family links and through support to the families of the missing – provides insight into ways that it has met this challenge and areas in which it may still seek to improve.

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