UK-based technology design and development firm Cambridge Consultants is developing a new technology that will help companies detect offshore oil leaks earlier.
The new technology platform is capable of detecting the natural fluorescence of even tiny amounts of oil in or on water.
Cambridge Consultants are using the fluorescence technology to build a new oil spill detection technology platform. It is expected to be more cost effective than employing aircraft equipped with radar and scanners to detect oil fluorescence, as the industry currently does.
The new technology will be more accurate and faster in reporting oil leaks than currently used unsophisticated visual reports. These are often inconsistent and result in many leakages not being detected until a thin film of oil appears on the water surface and is visible to naked eye.
Cambridge Consultants Oil and Gas associate director Dr Frances Metcalfe said the solutions currently available for oil leak detection do not fulfill all the requirements in terms of performance and reliability.
"To be effective and trusted, any detection system must detect spills early enough but be immune to false alarms – otherwise it will not be used," Metcalfe added.
"Our work so far shows that any reliable oil spill detection system will need to use more than one sensing method, and the best combination will depend largely on where and how it is going to be used.
"An oil spill ‘alarm’ system of sensors distributed across the seabed – or a series of oil platforms – is going to need a different design solution from a system for scanning a harbour or stretch of coastline from a distance, to track oil spills that might be heading for the shore."
The firm is expecting the new technology to provide a compact, robust system that can be permanently installed along subsea pipelines.
