First physical JIP seminar

Our non-intrusive level measurement Joint Industry Project (JIP) is supported by 6 operator companies (Equinor, ConocoPhillips, OKEA, Aker BP, Vår Energi and Petrobras) and 2 research institutes (SINTEF and Fraunhofer IKTS). Part of the financing is provided by The Research Council of Norway and Innovation Norway.

This November, we brought all partners together for our first physical JIP workshop in Trondheim (Norway). Being in the same room together for the first time was energizing! So many great discussions, transfer of experience and learning across company and project borders. The JIP was kicked off in February 2024 and it is going to continue for 3 years. There are several goals, but the main one is to further develop capabilities of our current technology for non-intrusive level measurement. This means attempting to create the Holy Grail of level measurement – a profiler tool! But in our case, a non-intrusive profiler tool.

Non-intrusive character of Nicoustic technology unlocks a lot of new opportunities for assets in operation. Most of brownfield assets are not equipped with state-of-the-art level measurement and thus there is room for improving production efficiency as well as reducing emissions and optimizing dosage of process chemicals (emulsion breakers and defoamers). Installing intrusive level measurement instruments to achieve this is prohibitively expensive and is rarely attempted. The cost of shutting down production to install a new instrument is just too high. With our non-intrusive system, installation can be performed without any impact on production and thus the total project costs is decreased by an order of magnitude.

The workshop started by diving into the details with three short technical lectures delivered by Robert Neubeck (researcher at Fraunhofer IKTS), Erlend Viggen (our technical advisor) and Uwe Lieske (our VP Technology). The lectures took the participants through the fundamentals of Guided Acoustic Waves, how we generate them with our sensor system and how we process the signals to arrive at level data.

During the JIP workshop we also had the opportunity to visit our test rig for emulsion and foam located at the SINTEF Multiphase Flow Laboratory. This site has historic significance for the Norwegian energy industry, since a lot of groundbreaking process- and flow-related research has been conducted here. We are building on this legacy as well as on the competence of our research partner SINTEF Industry. During the visit, the JIP partners could witness how we generate emulsions so that we can measure them with our non-intrusive sensors. It is not often you can see a dynamic emulsion experiment through a glass window!

We also visited our own Nicoustic lab where we run experiments in smaller scale. These include experiments in smaller tanks as well as tests were we investigate how guided acoustic waves propagate in different materials. Uwe Lieske had a demonstration of one of the experimental set-ups.

Back to news page