Lux Assure has been given a grant by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) for the development of a technology for corrosion mitigation in the oil and gas industry.
The Lux Assure proposal for the Maximising Recovery of UK's Oil and Gas Resources competition was selected for support among proposals from numerous other industrial and academic collaborations.
The competition, organised by the TSB, will invest nearly GBP5m across 10 projects in new research and development to find innovative technology solutions to help maximise the recovery of the UK's hydrocarbon resources.
Lux Assure applies light-based detection methods to analyse oil field fluids for their susceptibility to corrosion.
The project combines Lux's expertise in developing photonics solutions with its collaborator's experience in the deployment and operation of production monitoring systems.
Comic technology is based on detecting markers in the bulk fluid that indicate when the required amount of chemical inhibitor has been added to the system to prevent corrosion.
It represents a new class of corrosion monitoring tool, which can be applied across any system using film-forming corrosion inhibitors.
In the upstream oil and gas industry, it will allow engineers to ensure that enough inhibitor has been applied to the system and can prevent corrosion damage from occurring.
This is in contrast to established techniques that monitor the results of corrosive attacks, and provides a route to preventative treatment of systems that are critical for global energy supply.
The award will support the next phase of Comic development, which will focus on the transformation of techniques that are routinely used in laboratories, into a system that can be deployed in harsh oil field environments around the world.
