Remote internal inspection of the crude oil tanks on a floating production, storage and offshore facility to meet classification requirements
Annamaria Greenwood A *A
Annamaria Greenwood has been working in the corrosion industry since 1991. She has a degree in Chemistry and gained a Master’s in Corrosion Science and Engineering from the Corrosion Centre, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. She has worked in many facets of corrosion, including design and construction, in major projects in shipyards, cathodic protection, failure analysis and non-destructive testing. She has worked in different industries and countries, as a consultant, a contractor and for various operators. She has also been involved in the intelligent pigging of transmission pipelines, corrosion education, maintaining and defining the integrity strategies for facilities and implementation of data management for operators with respect to inspection databases such as APM. She is presently working at Geo Oceans and is passionate about the use of unmanned technologies to make the work safer. She is a professional member of ICORR and an Adjunct Fellow at Curtin University. |
Abstract
Geo Oceans work with remote inspection tooling for the marine environment. Over the last few years, they have been working on methodologies to allow inspection of floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) crude oil tanks (COT) without the need for manned entry. The purpose of this is twofold: to reduce the safety risk around manned entry into tanks and to give more cost effective and reproducible options with respect to inspection. This year, Geo Oceans, with their sister companies AUAV and Sonomatic, remotely completed the inspection of four COT tanks on an FPSO by robotic means. This has been achieved using a variety of tooling employed internal and external to the tank and by following a defined philosophy. The initial phase of the work was the engineering to determine the inspection philosophy and define the scope for inspection on the COT. The next phases involved data collection. The first inspection utilised remote inspection techniques to collect data on shared boundaries via the water ballast tank using a bespoke remotely operated vehicle. The results from this inspection confirmed the integrity of the tank and identified any issues occurring in the tank. The final phase was the internal visual inspection of the COT using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and the completion of the required ultrasonic thickness measurements, conducted by UAV and other methodologies. This presentation will give an overview of the project from development and implementation to results and will focus on lessons learned and the positives with respect to risk reduction to the industry.
Keywords: classification surveys, crude oil tank, FPSO, iCOT, integrity, NII, robotic, ROV, UAV, unmanned, water ballast tank.
Annamaria Greenwood has been working in the corrosion industry since 1991. She has a degree in Chemistry and gained a Master’s in Corrosion Science and Engineering from the Corrosion Centre, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. She has worked in many facets of corrosion, including design and construction, in major projects in shipyards, cathodic protection, failure analysis and non-destructive testing. She has worked in different industries and countries, as a consultant, a contractor and for various operators. She has also been involved in the intelligent pigging of transmission pipelines, corrosion education, maintaining and defining the integrity strategies for facilities and implementation of data management for operators with respect to inspection databases such as APM. She is presently working at Geo Oceans and is passionate about the use of unmanned technologies to make the work safer. She is a professional member of ICORR and an Adjunct Fellow at Curtin University. |
References
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