Transport is at the centre of worldwide oil demand. Of the 100 million or so bpd consumed globally, around 65% goes on transport.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are threatening around 25 million bpd of oil that are used by passenger and light vehicles.

So far, EVs are being held in check by range and charging concerns. While incremental improvements to batteries are slowly adding to EV driving range, charg...

LumaSense’s optical pyrometers help keep sulphur recovery units at the right temperature

The main reason refineries produce sulphur is simple – they have to. Regulations on sulphide gas emissions and sulphur content in fuels makes removing sulphur compounds necessary. Regulation has led where engineering already operated – sulphur wrecks process plant and pipework.

Sulphur recovery is usually a back...

Software company Cimteq can help make a cable factory smarter

The complexity of making a cable brings to mind the old rhetorical question about how long is a piece of string. An appropriate image, as the length of a cable is one of the factors that make cable manufacturing difficult, although there is more to it than that.

Short simple cables, think phone chargers, can be easily mass-produced. Their...

A new liquid removal technique could make more subsea tiebacks viable

Tieback projects for marginal gas fields often face critical problems such as water and hydrocarbon condensation, which causes slugging. Larger diameter pipes are more prone to slugging, but reducing pipe bores increases friction and pushes pressures up. More problems arrive when maintenance demands temporarily reduce pressures....

China’s Xian University is developing an exploding wire fracking technique

A team at Xian University led by Professor Zhang Yongming is expecting to trial an exploding wire plasma generator as a fracking technique in April 2019.

An “exploding wire” setup feeds a large and steeply rising current (released from capacitors) down a 0.5-mm thick wire. A current rise of above 100 amps per microsecond is n...

Liquid metals deliver solid performance

Scientists from Melbourne’s RMIT University have developed a way to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into solid carbon at room temperature.

Their technique uses a specially designed liquid metal composed of gallium, indium and tin, with a layer of cerium oxide and cerium nanoparticles on the outside. The gallium core makes the alloy a liquid, while the cerium outs...

The Centurion 3 survival system can self-heat when exposed to water

The energy industry has a strong health and safety culture and for good reason. There are a great many dangers facing anyone working on site. Most people do not worry about the dangers of their commute. But when you work on an oil rig and have to take a helicopter to work, you do.

If something goes wrong and a worker finds themselve...

Hapag Lloyd’s Sajir container ship will be the largest vessel so far converted to run partially on LNG

Merchant ship operators worldwide are under pressure to comply with International Maritime Organisation rules on SOx and NOx emissions. Until now, operators have been able to burn the lowest and dirtiest grades of heavy oils with relative impunity.

That is now ending. The IMO has introduced two new...

A new technique uses magnetic nanoparticles to remove oil from produced water

Offshore oil spills may make the headlines, but the industry faces a less obvious and systemic problem with produced water. Dumping it in evaporation pools or re-injecting it may not be permitted by regulators for ever, or desired by operators keen to establish their environmental credibility. If produced water could be m...

A simple change to the orientation of graphite flakes could dramatically alter the specs for Li-ion batteries

Battrion, a graphite start-up located in Zurich and a spin-out from Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology, this month announced that it had won a 100,000 euro prize from Inno Energy, an innovation promoter funded by 23 large European energy and tech companies and universities. These incl...

Allegro’s licensable neural networks can speed up machine learning cases

Allegro.AI – an early-stage machine learning and vision company based in Tel Aviv – has announced a major strategic partnership with NetApp – a US$16 billion veteran in the data storage and cloud services business. Allegro was established in 2016, and in 2018 raised over US$11 million from a consortium of backers which include...

Trimble’s XR10 headset helps engineers visualise workplace designs

When working on complex construction or refurb jobs engineers have always had the relevant blueprints and plans on hand, today often in 3D representation. However, it still takes some imagination for the plans to leap from the page into reality.

That leap would be made easier if the engineer could see the plan drawn in life-size 3D a...

CGG’s Distributed Acoustic Sensing measures sound from inside a well bore using fibre-optic cable

CGG and its subsidiary Sercel have released a new down-hole seismic solution – Distributed Acoustic Sensing, or DAS. DAS is designed to overcome problems created by traditional seismic surveying in which both transmitter and geophones are located on the surface.

These problems have already been partiall...