The University of Bath is working on two projects to develop new sensor technology with industry.

“We expect a technological breakthrough for an application that has been an Achilles heel of the oil and gas industry for many decades”

 

The two new Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) from Innovate UK are worth over £450k for a total of five and a half years and are led by Professor Manuch Soleimani from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, a world expert on promising electromagnetic technologies for accurately capturing the composition and dynamics of conductive fluids.

“These two projects are both very challenging, enabling us to take the technologies that we have pioneered in the University of the Bath Engineering Tomography Lab (ETL) to real industrial application with significant potential impact,” said Prof Soleimani.

Oil quality monitoring

The second project for Oil & Gas Measurement (OGM) in Ely which produces state-of-the-art measuring systems for crude oil sampling and metering. The project will develop an accurate ‘water-cut’ meter that is not affected by salinity to measure the quality of the crude oil and how much water is present.

OGM already has accurate and technologically advanced metering products, quantifying the amount and quality of fluids passing through pipes, but measuring the quality is an issue.

“We are combining the expertise of Professor Solemani and ETL with that of OGM, in multiphase fluid mechanics and accelerated computing,” said Dr Wes Maru, R&D Manager of OGM. “As a result we expect a technological breakthrough and subsequent product for an application that has been an Achilles heel of the oil and gas industry for many decades”.

The second project is working with Niftylift of Milton Keynes (above) on Mobile Elevating Work Platforms (MEWPs) that allow workers to work safely at height. “The KTP will produce an intelligent sensor system to further improve operator safety on MEWPs,” said Thomas Cousins, Product Designer at Niftylift.

The ETL Tomography lab at Bath has been working with CERN on new technology.

 

Bath Measurement Universities