Background

Dotz was approached by a global leader in the field of chemistry programs and services for the oil & gas industry. The customer commercializes corrosion inhibitors (CIs) for offshore oil and gas transmission pipelines, to minimize costly corrosion damage to equipment and downtime that impacts revenue. To achieve optimal performance, the CIs are added to the drilling fluid in a specific concentration. Monitoring this concentration is critical, since insufficient CI results in substantial damage, while excess use wastes an expensive resource. However, solutions for detecting, quantifying, and monitoring the concentration of corrosion inhibitor in drilling fluids are time-consuming, expensive, and highly inefficient, requiring samples to be shipped to centralized laboratories for analysis that can take weeks or even months.

Challenge

Looking to enhance the simplicity and speed of the process, the company sought a technological solution that would enable on-site, real-time CI concentration monitoring, significantly reducing the time taken to obtain reliable, valuable data for efficient corrosion control.

The first-of-its-kind, recently-patented solution developed by Dotz has successfully undergone several in-field pilot tests and will soon be deployed throughout the customer’s operations. When validated against the traditional laboratory-based monitoring process, the highly-efficient solution showed extreme reliability.

Solution

Using its novel and versatile marker portfolio and knowhow, Dotz developed a unique solution for precisely and rapidly monitoring CI concentration.

The criteria for the solution were complex and often conflicting. It had to be stable in an oil-based solution, while enabling optical detection in an aqueous phase; capable of seamless incorporation into the corrosion inhibitor formulation, without altering its unique properties or affecting its performance; and robust enough to withstand the extreme conditions of the drilling process, including persistent high pressure and temperatures.

Identifying the most compatible marker to meet these challenges required intensive research by our highly-knowledgeable and experienced team. The answer was achieved by integrating a marker with a quantitively-measurable optical property that precisely correlates with the CI concentration.

An activation agent and a marker-specific detector were also developed to enable a simple, immediate, on-site process for detecting and quantifying the CI concentration. The resulting easy-to-use, miniature device presents a numeric result in just a few seconds, enabling real-time CI dosage management and significant savings on maintenance and CI overdosing costs.

Impact

The first-of-its-kind, recently-patented solution developed by Dotz has successfully undergone several in-field pilot tests and will soon be deployed throughout the customer’s operations. When validated against the traditional laboratory-based monitoring process, the highly-efficient solution showed extreme reliability. With results delivered in real time, rather than weeks after the fact, the risk and possibly severe consequences of over/underdosing are minimized. With the traceable, measurable Dotz marker incorporated into the CI without altering its unique properties, and the mobile detector that enables real-time, on-site detection, the company can now provide its customers with a game-changing corrosion control solution.