
Funded Projects
The mission of SSI is to improve safety and efficiency of offshore energy development by facilitating engineering, science and policy research and through third party unbiased validation of technology and practices. As such, SSI Research Grants are designed to seed innovative research that can positively impact safe and reliable exploration and energy production in the Gulf of Mexico. The support of industry partners is strongly encouraged.
Development of Self-powered Distributed Sensors/Reporters for Integrated Offshore Asset and Local Environment Monitoring
Triboelectric effect has been known to human beings for thousands of years. It is responsible for the charging of clouds and subsequent lighting, as well as for the charged amber and fur after rubbing. However, only recently has the electricity from triboelectric effect been harvested and used to power external circuits. Immobile charges at two interfaces are transferred to external electrodes through static induction and relative motion of the interfaces, such devices are called triboelectric nano generators (TENGs).
Since the electricity is harvested from the environment, more electricity can be harvested by deploying more generators, and electricity can be conveniently collected with a capacitor, thus besides LEDs, triboelectric generators can power up more devices. In fact, many various sensors have been integrated with the generators to provide local information such as temperature, humidity, pressure, etc. This network of distributed generators and sensors forms an Internet of Things (IoT) for reliable and efficient monitoring and management. Compared to typical environment, ocean waves and subsea currents can provide far more energy and thus are a perfect environment to generate distributed powers.
Fig. 1 below illustrates how these self-powered blinkers are deployed to monitor the asset in shallow and deep sea.

Fig.1.An artistic illustration of self-powered triboelectric blinkers distributed on the surface and sub-surface for integrated offshore asset monitoring.
Pipeline leaks are costly, dangerous, and detrimental to the environment. While Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems can detect leaks, methods for earlier leak detection can help reduce the negative impacts of leaks and enable a faster response. In our previous work supported by the SSI, we demonstrated that sensors based on organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) can potentially be used for rapid detection of hydrocarbons and petrochemical derivatives in the subsea environment. Specifically, we developed sensor devices that rapidly responded to various alcohols and organics in seawater. The sensors functioned successfully in both synthetic and real seawater (Galveston), displaying a characteristic transfer curve which represents a systematic modulation of the source-drain current.
- Industry Impact
Development of Self-powered Distributed Sensors/Reporters for Integrated Offshore Asset and Local Environment Monitoring
The monitoring of floating and subsea offshore asset and their surrounding environment is essential to the oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. An ideal solution is to deploy distributed sensors/reporters that can sense local conditions and then report to the control center. A major challenge to this approach is the electrical power supply in the remote deep sea, especially the distributed power to individual sensors. This issue becomes more severe when there is a power outage due to manmade or natural emergency or disaster. The goal of this project is to design, manufacture and test the self-powered blinkers that are made of triboelectric generators and light-emitting diodes. These blinkers will emit flashing light without external power and allow them to be detected and tracked 24/7 in any environmental conditions. They function as a transponder of a plane or a ship, are the simplest forms of sensors/reporters. Since sufficient electricity can be stored or expanded through a network of triboelectric generators, important parameters such as temperature, pressure and salinity can be measured by integrated sensors, more sophisticated communication through light or sound can be added, thus an integrated monitoring and tracking of offshore asset can be realized in the future. Such technique of self-powered sensors/reporters will provide a reliable and long-term solution for safe operation of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as many other areas around the world.
Practical Implementation of Organic Electrochemical Transistors (OECTs) for Subsea Detection
The proposed sensors have much broader applications beyond leak detections and therefore will be of interest to companies in oil and gas, water and wastewater treatment, and biomedical industries. We actively seek out firms that have a potential need for chemical sensor systems for subsea applications.
- Project Objectives
Development of self-powered distributed sensors/reporters for integrated offshore assets and local environment monitoring.
SSI, looks to develop self-powered distributed sensors/reporters for integrated offshore assets and local environmental monitoring by:
- Developing self-powered sustainable reporters/sensors that can be attached and deployed to assets of an offshore platform for integrated asset monitoring and management;
- Designing self-powered blinkers that can emit flashing lights as a reporter. Using the triboelectric effect, these sensors, reporters will harvest energy from ocean waves or marine currents.
SSI, will research the practical implementation of OECT by:
- Evaluating OECT sensor sensitivity and performance under realistic subsea conditions;
- Improving the specificity and sensitivity of MIPs by implementing machine learning (ML) to optimize the chemistry of MIPs.
- Tasks:
Task 1: Development of self-powered distributed sensors/reporters for integrated offshore asset and local environment monitoring
- Goal 1: Design of highly efficient buoyant triboelectric blinkers
- Goal 2: Fabrication and characterization of buoyant triboelectric blinkers
- Goal 3: Test of buoyant triboelectric blinkers in a tank and Galveston Bay
- Goal 4: Design subsea triboelectric blinkers and quantify the lifetime
- Goal 5: New Technology Qualification (NTQ) and third-party verification
- Goal 6: Design subsea triboelectric blinkers
Task 2: Practical Implementation of Organic Electrochemical Transistors (OECTs) for Subsea Detection
- Goal 7: Evaluate OECT sensor sensitivity and performance
- Goal 8: Improve the specificity and sensitivity of MIPs
- Goal 9: Test a multiplexed array of sensors
- Goal 10: Quantify the lifetime and stability of OECTs in subsea conditions
- Gantt Chart:
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/01/2024Project Completion Stage:
Multi-port Energy Router using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT): Energy Management and Supervisory Control
The phase-I of the Multi-port Energy Routers using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT) project (March 2021 to February 2022) explored the interface of renewable resources and subsea O&G production systems with the High Voltage DC (HVDC) or Medium Voltage DC (MVDC) grid. Solid State Transformers (SSTs) enabled seamless interconnectivity and interoperability between the various energy sources, including wind, solar, battery energy storage systems (BESS), etc. The Phase-I research also investigated how to optimally design and integrate SSTs into the MERIT system in a ‘triple active bridge’ (TAB) configuration. However, several critical challenges related to the energy management and control of the interconnected system still remain. In this Phase-II of the MERIT project, the focus will be on the overall energy management strategy and its implementation considering interoperability of the interconnected energy sources to the MERIT system. As a part of this, efficient power conversion schemes for the renewable energy sources – wind, solar, fuel cells and BESS, will be developed, which will help interface these resources with the MERIT system. Interconnection with both MVDC and medium voltage AC (MVAC) grids will be explored in the investigation. The conversion, energy management and supervisory control schemes will then be devised in such a way that they satisfy the requirements of IEEE-1547 standards in terms of voltage sag/swell, low voltage ride through (LVRT) and reactive power. Due to the intermittency of renewable energy sources (RESs), the team will analyze the methods of maintaining secure operation of such offshore power systems for high power quality in the offshore grid even during transient conditions due to large motor loads. Also, due to the lengthy cables from the source to the subsea motor loads and due to the long distance from the motor controller to the motor, the rate of change of voltage (dv/dt) at the output of the power electronic converters and the noise in the sensor cables, it may lead to several problems such as EMI, cable insulation, thus affecting the overall operation. Hence, considering these effects of the transformer, cable, and motor, suitable filters will be designed and also sensor less operation techniques for the motors will be investigated as part of the overall energy management strategy. Real time hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) systems will be used to validate the developed methods and concepts.
Figure 1: Overall block diagram of the proposed MERIT system, with multiple energy sources and subsea load
Offshore oil and natural gas (O&G) rig platforms consume a significant amount of fossil fuels to power their operations. The Gulf of Mexico is an important region for offshore energy resource production. Most existing power systems for offshore O&G platforms heavily rely on local diesel generators or gas generators. Such power systems lead to substantial greenhouse gas emissions. This brings the opportunity for renewable energy. The advancement of offshore renewable generation technologies enables us to redesign the platforms’ power systems with clean energy for reliably supplying offshore loads, which will lead to a substantial reduction of CO2 emissions mitigating climate change.
Figure 2. Illustration of the proposed OHRES system for powering offshore loads with clean renewable energy.

- Industry Impact
Multi-port Energy Router using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT): Energy Management and Supervisory Control
The investigators are actively working with the offshore industries in the area of power and energy systems to advance the research that can positively impact safe and reliable exploration and energy production, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico. The team recently started an industry consortium in the area of subsea power and energy systems to advance the subsea oil extraction that will lead to higher efficiency and lower emissions. The name of the consortium is “Power electronics - Energy storage - Microgrids and Subsea Electrical Consortium” (PEMSEC). The proposed research is one of the projects suggested by the existing consortium members as part of the future scope of PEMSEC. This project will advance the knowledge on advanced power conversion, energy management and control of offshore RESs with the MERIT system.
Optimal Sizing of Onsite Generation Resources for Self-Sustainable Offshore Loads
With various renewable generation and storage technologies being available, it becomes practically possible to replace traditional diesel/gas generators with a hybrid energy system supplying clean power. This project will design such a system and optimize the onsite energy resources considering cost and reliability. The proposed system will ensure continuous power supply to offshore platforms in an economic and reliable manner. The cost-benefit analysis will estimate the levelized cost of electricity; this information can be used to facilitate the decision-making for stake holders in the O&G industry. The success of this project will not only benefit the offshore loads in the Gulf of Mexico but also the offshore loads in other part of the world. In addition, this project is consistent with many initiatives on industry electrification and will lead to a substantial reduction of CO2 emissions and thus mitigate climate change.
- Project Objectives
Multi-port Energy Router using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT): Energy Management and Supervisory Control.
In phase II of the MERIT project, SSI proposes to develop energy management and supervisory control strategies for interfacing the primary renewable energy sources using the Multi-port Energy Routers with Intelligent Transformers. SSI will:
- Develop a detailed energy management scheme and supervisory control architecture for the seamless transfer of energy between the renewable energy resources and the MERIT system, and to the loads, by analyzing the source side and load side characteristics.
- Study the state-of-the-art and develop power conversion schemes, along with control methods, to interface the primary renewable energy resources with the MERIT with both MVDC and MVAC grid interconnection.
- Assess the controllability and efficiency of the power converters, and employ advanced techniques (like machine learning), and also modeling of different system components for drive including transformer, sine filter, long transmission line, transformer, and the PM motor to improve the performance with the energy management and supervisory controllers. Validation of the developed model in Typhoon HIL/ MATLAB simulation.
- Development of algorithms for automatic parameter estimation of the equivalent circuit model for the complete system from drive perspective in subsea applications, and design and development of efficient control strategies for subsea drive systems.
- Evaluate the overall power conversion scheme, energy management and supervisory control architecture on how well they satisfy the requirements of IEEE-1547 standards in terms of voltage sag/swell, low voltage ride through (LVRT) and reactive power.
- Implement the system in a real time emulator and verify the overall operation using a simulator unit, such as Typhoon Hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) system.
The proposed research aims to design offshore renewables-dominated energy systems for supplying continuous power to offshore loads in a self-sustainable manner with onsite resources. The proposed system consists of clean and renewable generation and energy storage resources. The resources’ sizes will be optimized to meet the offshore demand while considering economics and reliability. This project focuses on the system architecture design.
- Establish the models and conduct parameterization for offshore renewable resources and energy storage resources;
- Develop a long-term planning model for energy asset investment decision-making considering battery degradation; time-domain simulations will be conducted to evaluate the designed hybrid energy system.
- Develop an open-source tool that implements the proposed research and makes it publicly available. This tool will be able to handle customized resource specifications and projected electrical loads at an offshore platform that will allow academia and industry to use it.
- Tasks:
Task 1: Multi-port Energy Router using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT): Energy Management and Supervisory Control
- Goal 1: Energy management and supervisory control strategies
- Goal 2: Modeling power conversion and control methods
- Goal 3: Modeling of the system components
- Goal 4: Performance improvement of the power conversion/control stages
- Goal 5: Providing grid services and satisfying interconnection standard
Task 2: Optimal Sizing of Onsite Generation Resources for Self-Sustainable Offshore Loads
- Goal 6: Modeling and parameterization of renewable resources and energy storage
- Goal 7: Battery degradation modeling and quantification in an offshore environment
- Goal 8: Optimal system planning with renewable resources and energy storage
- Goal 9: Stability analysis of designed hybrid energy systems
- Goal 10: Open-source tool development for the proposed research
- Gantt Chart:
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/31/2024Project Completion Stage:
Robotic Fish Enabled Pipeline Inspection
Oil pipelines have been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico for decades. After many years of service, the health conditions of those pipelines are unknown. Any leakage from pipes that carry harmful chemical fluids can cause significant pollution to the environment. For example, recently, a pipeline ruptured by a ship anchor, as shown in Fig. 1, in southern California leaks thousands of gallons of oil leakage which causes a despaired environmental disaster to the west coast. If the ruptures are not localized and repair in time, the harm to life, nature, and the economy can be dramatic. Timely inspection of subsea pipelines is thus the key to the prevention of environmental disaster caused by oil spills. Current inspection techniques often involve a trained human operator who operates a remotely controlled vehicle to take images and videos of underwater pipeline for offline rupture detection. Such inspection requires excessive amounts of time and money. With the introduction of state-of-the-art robotic and artificial intelligent technologies, such limitations can be remediated resulting in an extra layer of safety.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Navigation through Steel Scaffolding
Lifecycle management for underwater assets requires routine sensing. These activities are challenging in deep water environments, and often impossible to track visually due to murky water, when obscured by silt, clay, sand and sediments, or when purposefully trenched (buried pipelines/ trunk lines).For these environments, magnetic sensing is often used to detect ferromagnetic and/or conductive materials [11,12].Because the seafloor is difficult or challenging to access, the magnetic sensors are often mounted on Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). Navigation through 3D structures such as riser platforms or moorings is hard because the sensing required must be in three dimensions, rather than a simple scan of the ground. Moreover, cable management of the tether connecting the ROV to the remote controller becomes increasingly difficult as the number of obstacles increases. The navigation must prevent not only the ROV from collisions with the structure, but also prevent the cable from being entangled. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) reduce the challenges due to tether management but must make navigation choices independently.
Figure 2: Proposed system: an automononous underwater vehicle uses multiple arrays of magnetic sensors to navigate through a set of seal seaffolds.
Innovative Research in Monitoring Subsea Connections Using Percussion and Machine Learning
A timely inspection of subsea infrastructure, especially subsea connections, is the key to the prevention of oil spills. Current inspection techniques often involve a trained human operator and require excessive amounts of time and money. The problems are exacerbated if the inspection target is deep underwater. UH researchers developed the innovative percussion approach with machine learning to detecting subsea flange looseness. The main advantage of the percussion approach is the ease for implementation because of the elimination of need of installation sensors on the subsea structures to be inspected. In addition, this approach has the potential to automate the inspection process by integration with remote operated vehicle (ROV) enabled percussion tools.
Figure 3: Flowchart of the proposed FR-MRCKT
- Industry Impact
Robotic Fish Enabled Pipeline Inspection
The research will lead to time-efficient and cost-effective intelligent robotic systems for underwater pipeline inspection. Through this robotic system, pipeline anomalies due to seismic activity, offshore drilling, turbulence, and ship anchoring may be detected at early stages allowing operators to make informed decisions on maintenance and repairs of the pipeline. It is expected that this research will build stronger ties with many companies in offshore energy industry, and will lead to major industrial support. The results of this research will be valuable not only to international deep-water oil and gas markets, but also to subsea renewable energies and subsea mining.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Navigation through Steel Scaffolding
This proposal will break new ground in underwater sensing and in robotic navigation by using 3D magnetic sensors to navigate through an underwater environment. As part of the process, this proposal will test two types of terrestrial magnetic sensors for localizing, tracking, and sensing ferrous underwater objects: fluxgate magnetometers and arrays of Hall-effect probes paired with active inductors.
Innovative Research in Monitoring Subsea Connections Using Percussion and Machine Learning
Since flanges are commonly used in subsea oil and gas exploration and production facilities, the proposed research will contribute to the improved level of safe operations of such facilities by providing early warnings of malfunctional flanges. Additionally, with minimum efforts, the proposed research can be extended to other types of connections.
- Project Objectives
Robotic Fish Enabled Pipeline Inspection
The goal of this project is to develop transformative robotic pipeline inspection technology that will lead to a time efficient and cost-effective system for underwater pipeline inspection which can prevent thousands of oil leakage. Such robotic systems will consist of a swarm of bio-inspired autonomous underwater vehicles (BAUVs) equipped with video cameras and underwater communication device with machine learning based image processing and edge computing capabilities. The BAUVs will be able to autonomously swim along a subsea pipeline, detect the ruptures of pipeline, intelligently. Interpret results through unsupervised machine learning and edge computing, and communicate with a nearby station through an underwater communication device.
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Navigation through Steel Scaffolding
In this project, we propose to explore the design and implementation of a system that uses magnetometers to sense and navigate around magnetic (e.g., metal) structures. Our goal is to produce theoretical and experimental insights towards the use of magnetic sensing and subsea navigation to aid with subsea docking, localization, and repair.
Innovative Research in Monitoring Subsea Connections Using Percussion and Machine Learning
The general goal of this SSI (Subsea Systems Institute) project is to conduct innovative research to improve the percussion method with machine learning for the purpose of monitoring subsea flanges. The specific goals of this project are:
- Develop an innovative approach to monitoring subsea flanges so that the baseline data is no longer needed
- Develop a new machine learning method to increase robustness of the percussion approach.
- To investigate the effectiveness of the percussion approach in monitoring a pipeline with multiple flanges and to determine the least number of needed percussions.
- Tasks:
Task 1: Robotic Fish Enabled Pipeline Inspection
- Goal 1: Robotic fish design and camera orientation control
- Goal 2: Underwater surveying and pipeline tracking
- Goal 3: Deep machine learning based on pipeline detection
- Goal 4: Mobile edge computing implemented on robotic fish & comprehensive testing
Task 2: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Navigation through Steel Scaffolding
- Goal 5: Hall-effect array sensing
- Goal 6: Fluxgate magnetometer testing
- Goal 7: Potential field navigation with magnetic sensors
- Goal 8: High precision cable localization rig
- Goal 9: Material detection/classification
Task 3: Innovative Research in Monitoring Subsea Connections Using Percussion and Machine Learning
- Goal 10: Develop an innovative approach to monitoring subsea flanges
- Goal 11: Develop an integrated deep-learning and shallow-learning method
- Goal 12: Investigate the effectiveness of the percussion approach in monitoring
- Gantt Chart:
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/31/2024Project Completion Stage:
Characterization of deep-water Gulf of Mexico salt domes and proximal sediments for storage of hydrogen & sequestration of CO2
Deep-water hydrocarbon production facilities over salt bodies in the Gulf of Mexico offer significant opportunities to be expanded or repurposed for liquid and gas storage, CO2 sequestration, and energy transition purposes (please see Figure below). There is substantial promise for offshore energy processing and storage in various forms as well as hydrocarbon and renewable energy production. However, there are many aspects of offshore salt bodies and associated facilities that require characterization and consideration.

For example, hydrogen has only several underground storage facilities worldwide – all on land. What are the offshore challenges? While there are several operational marine CO2 sequestration sites, the advantages and limitations of offshore salt bodies and surrounding sediments is early in their evaluation. We are thus motivated to undertake this investigation into characterizing salt domes and their surrounding sediments for storage and sequestration possibilities for a variety of gases and fluids. We will continue investigation of CO2 marine injection sites (Sleipner and Volve, North Sea; Tiber, Gulf of Mexico) to improve the process of integrating seismic surveys and well logs to better image and monitor gas injections and sequestrations. Using both the physical modeling and offshore field data, we will develop enhanced seismic inversion methods and machine learning techniques to augment lithologic mapping, interpretation of salt and sub-salt structures, and elucidation of saturation changes and flow. Repeated injection/depletion cycles associated with natural gas, CO2, or hydrogen storage are important and detailed reservoir characterization will be conducted to build models for these varying processes. We will also conduct scaled physical surveys over salt body models in the lab before and after CO2-saturation to generate time-lapse effects for further imaging and analysis. These primary data will be instructive in developing algorithms and processing flows to delineate salt boundaries, internal structures and proximal sediments as well as develop our ability to recognize gas-saturation signatures.
Developing Methods of Producing and Processing Marine Algae to Biocrude
About 76% of the global warming is caused by CO2 emission from different industries including many petroleum refineries located in Gulf of Mexico and other human activities. Many carbon capture technologies have been developed to mitigate global warming. The green technologies such as fresh and marine Algae Carbon Capture (ACC) are getting more attractive due to possibility of producing different products like biocrude, biochar and proteins. It has been estimated that about 1.6 to 2.0 ton of CO2 is captured for every dry ton of algal biomass. Abundant sea water available in coastal area could be used to produce marine algae sustainably. Developing the proposed method of producing and processing marine algae to biocrude will help to mitigate CO2 from different industries in Gulf of Mexico and use the biocrude to produce biofuels using existing petrochemical infrastructure.
Extending the Life of Offshore Oil and Gas Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico for Profitable New uses in Power and Hydrogen Generation in Preparation for the Energy Transition
The work on this project will be carried out under the umbrella of Project SHOWPLACE (Storing Hydrogen from Offshore Wind Power for Load-balancing and Carbon Elimination) - an Industry-Government-Public-Academia Collaborative Demonstration Project, led by the University of Houston UH Energy program. The project envisions repurposing offshore oil and gas infrastructure (platforms, wells, pipelines, and power transmission) for energy transition uses, such as power from wind, solar and wave energy sources, green hydrogen generation and storage, thus extending the life of such offshore infrastructure for two decades or more. With hundreds of platforms and hundreds of miles of pipelines, the Gulf of Mexico offers significant opportunity to leverage this infrastructure to create low carbon energy projects. This project will help the industry stakeholders develop a deeper understanding of the potential for such projects, as well as the associated challenges and changes needed to advance them.
Figure 2: Dsider Hydrogen System Model
- Industry Impact
Characterization of deep-water Gulf of Mexico salt domes and proximal sediments for storage of hydrogen & sequestration of CO2
We are bringing together four strong geoscience and engineering groups at University of Houston (UH) plus substantial industry interaction which promise to bring transformational results to the offshore energy industry. The work will have major impact on the preparation and planning for future marine energy and effluent storage in the Gulf of Mexico in addition to extending offshore asset life, enhancing its integrity via monitoring, and assisting with the integration of renewable energies.
Developing Methods of Producing and Processing Marine Algae to Biocrude
The benefit of developing this process is multiprong which include: Using marine algae to sequester GHG could be used by different existing industries (petrochemical, natural gas/coal powerplant and others) located in the Gulf of Mexico coastal areas that release significant amount GHG in the atmosphere.
- Sea water is widely available in coastal area and using them to produce marine algal biomass will be sustainable.
- Developing the close loop integrated process will efficiently recycle the soluble waste stream rich in nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, minerals, hydrolyzed protein and carbohydrates) produced in FH process will help to efficiently managing the soluble liquid stream.
- produce renewable biocrude using HTL process can be used in existing petroleum refinery infrastructure in Gulf of Mexico producing drop in biofuels benefit environment and reducing our dependence of fossil fuel.
- Producing co-products such as biochar and HTL aqueous stream (rich in mineral and nutrients) could be used as soil amendments increasing soil organic carbon and plant growth promoting ingredients respectively benefiting agriculture
Extending the Life of Offshore Oil and Gas Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico for Profitable New uses in Power and Hydrogen Generation in Preparation for the Energy Transition
The results of this project have the potential to guide new investments in low carbon energy projects, resulting in multiple pathways of benefits for the US GOM region. Offshore operators and regulatory bodies will stand to benefit from continued revenue generation from installed infrastructure through low carbon energy projects. A significant portion of the decommissioning expenditure can be delayed by a decade or two. The skilled workforce in the oil and gas sector can be productively employed beyond the end of the oil and gas phase of this infrastructure. And most importantly, the offshore GOM infrastructure will play a critical role in supplying low carbon energy to the population centers along the Gulf Coast.
- Project Objectives
Characterization of deep-water Gulf of Mexico salt domes and proximal sediments for storage of hydrogen & sequestration of CO2
We will use our world-class laboratories and teams at UH to undertake core measurements, scaled salt body surveys (please see photographs below), algorithm development, and offshore field data analysis for substantial energy and environmental benefit.
Subsurface storage and sequestration begins with gas, fluid, and rock properties. Thus, we will conduct novel and difficult experiments on salt and salt-proximal sediments while saturating them with CO2, helium, and hydrogen to better understand their flow, elastic, and mechanical behavior (lab photos below).
Developing Methods of Producing and Processing Marine Algae to Biocrude
Marine microalgae sequester greenhouse gases such as CO2 and use them as carbon source to build their body mass comprising of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins. Several cultivation methods have been developed to produce marine algal biomass using sea water and used as sustainable feed stock for producing biocrude. Here, we propose to develop a cost-effective method of producing marine microalgae Nannochloropsis gaditana contain (35-40% lipids) using sea water in a vertical tubular reactor system. The cultivated algal will be separated after flocculation by changing the pH and sedimentation. After de-watering, the algal slurry (10-15 wt %) will be pumped through a continuous flow-through hydrothermal Flash hydrolysis (FH) skid mount reactor. The FH processes results in breakdown algal cell wall producing hydrolyzed slurry comprising of soluble and insoluble streams. The insoluble algal stream is rich in lipid and soluble algal stream comprised of hydrolyzed peptides and carbohydrates. The insoluble stream will be subjected Hydrothermal Liquefaction (HTL) to produce biocrude and biochar. The soluble algal liquid stream will be used as growth media for cultivating N. gadiatana effectively managing the waste stream. Our preliminary studies have shown that the lipids content in the insoluble stream has been increased from 33.5% in N. gadiatana to 65.5 wt. % (dry weight) and the ash content has been reduced by 70%. Further, HTL processing insoluble algal stream produce 69% biocrude, 2% biochar and remaining 29% are converted to aqueous phase, gases, and losses.
There are four major objectives for the proposed project to achieve the project goal.
- Evaluate the feasibility of growing N. gadiatana algal biomass using recycled FH nutrients, flocculate, and separation.
- Perform FH hydrolysis of N. gadiatana algal biomass slurry (10-15 wt.%).
- Process the insoluble algal solid stream generated in FT process to biocrude using HTL process and characterize their chemical properties.
- Determine the mass and energy balance for the proposed integrated process using reported procedures.
Extending the Life of Offshore Oil and Gas Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico for Profitable New uses in Power and Hydrogen Generation in Preparation for the Energy Transition
- Phase 1: High grading existing infrastructure locations in Texas GOM for potential life extension. Deliverables: LCOE and LCOH maps for the Texas Gulf of Mexico; Ranked list of existing infrastructure locations with a high potential of life extension.
- Phase 2: Concept Optimization Studies for high graded locations. Deliverable: Integrated system model; optimized concept for each high graded location.
- Tasks:
Task 1: Characterization of deep-water Gulf of Mexico salt domes and proximal sediments for storage of hydrogen & sequestration of CO2
- Goal 1: Rock physics measurements and analysis in the petroleum engineering lab
- Goal 2: Properties of sub-salt sand potential reservoirs
- Goal 3: Physical modeling
- Goal 4: Seismic simulation, processing, and interpretation
- Goal 5: Review of GOM salt distributions
Task 2: Developing Methods of Producing and Processing Marine Algae to Biocrude
- Goal 6: Evaluate the feasibility of growing N. gaditana algal biomass
- Goal 7: Perform FH hydrolysis of N. gaditana algal biomass slurry 10-15wt.%
- Goal 8: Process the insoluble algal solid stream generated in the FT process
- Goal 9: Determine the mass and energy balance
Task 3: Extending the Life of Offshore Oil and Gas Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico for Profitable New uses in Power and Hydrogen Generation in Preparation for the Energy Transition.
- Goal 10: High grading existing infrastructure locations in Texas GOM
- Goal 11: Conducting concept optimization studies
- Gantt Chart:
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/31/2024Project Completion Stage:
Nearly 1,500 oil and gas (O&G) rigs are located offshore across the globe, the largest share of which are in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The recent trend in O&G industry is to install the subsea processing loads on the seabed for reducing the required space on the platform or even removing the platform altogether. The subsea processes (or subsea factory) include gas compression, boosting, water injection, and separation. Typical power consumption of the Subsea loads is in the range of 5-300 MW, traditionally supplied by local gas turbines or diesel generators. Such power generation strategies have led to significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the electric distribution system of O&G platforms is characterized as a weak electric grid, resulting in poor power quality, lower power factor, voltage and current harmonics, voltage notches, and common mode voltages. All these result in increased losses and also affect the long-term reliability.
This project proposes a system of Multi-port Energy Routers using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT) to interface renewable resources and subsea O&G factories with the HVDC (or MVDC) Grid. In this project, we will investigate combining the energy from wind, wave, floating PV panels and fuel cell - based generators, all located near the subsea factories, to power the loads. Intelligent power converters, including solid state transformers (SSTs), are critical to enhance the power density, reliability and efficiency of the proposed MERIT system. SSTs enable seamless interconnectivity and interoperability between the various energy sources. SSTs support features such as instantaneous voltage compensation, power outage compensation, fault isolation, bi-directional power flow, etc. This research will also investigate how to optimally design and integrate SSTs into the MERIT system to have the best performance both during transient and steady state conditions. It is expected that widespread implementation of the proposed synergies can lead to over 50 % reduction in emissions.
As one of the foremost requirements of a subsea power delivery system is reliability, HVDC protection units must conform to extremely stringent specifications in terms of fault interruption time and fault level. However, a major challenge in the growth of DC power market is the lack of reliable protection against short-circuit faults. A fault in a DC system results in fast ramp up of the fault current. Moreover, DC fault current does not experience any natural zero-crossing. Therefore, DC circuit breakers (DCCBs) should be capable of fast fault quenching in order to prevent damage to the DC system and maintain grid resiliency. Additionally, a DCCB should operate with minimal power loss as a closed switch. Fault interruption using a DCCB causes enormous energy dissipation and voltage stress. If a DC fault current is 4-5 times higher than the rated DCCB, then it cannot work efficiently without expanding its components. Therefore, the use of a fault current limiter is essential, and the superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) is the most promising choice together with a fast-switching DCCB in series. Resistive type superconducting fault current limiter (R-SFCL) is one of the most ideal, compact, small size current limiting devices to protect the power system and electrical equipment. It can limit the fault current effectively in power systems where CBs can work safely and prevent damage to the circuit components within several milliseconds.
- Additional Media Assets:
- Overarching Goal:
To design and develop a MERIT system for integrating renewable energy sources, energy storage and the Medium-Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) grid with the subsea loads. The project also explores the control strategy of the MERIT system to reduce the intermittency of the renewable energy sources, in order to ensure the safety and stability of the grid interconnection. Another goal is to assess the performance of Coupled Inductor Hybrid Circuit Breaker (CIHCB) Topology with integration of Resistive-Superconducting Fault Current Limiter (R-SFCL)
- Industry Impact:
The estimated financial loss for incidents due to poor power quality in the O&G sector is $300,000-800,000 a day. To increase the energy efficiency and reduce the CO2 and NOx emissions, several solutions have been proposed in the literature. Among these solutions, the supply of electric power to the subsea loads from the shore as HVAC (50 Hz/60 Hz) or HVDC power transmission has been increasingly examined. In addition, other techniques such as low frequency AC transmission from the shore have also been considered. In order to supply reliable power to the subsea loads at high system efficiency and low emissions, there is a growing interest in employing offshore renewable resources close to the point of use. However, such a system has predominantly stayed in the conceptual stage so far. Hence, there is a compelling need to develop technical methodologies for interconnecting multiple megawatt-scale systems offshore.
The MERIT system incorporates features like instantaneous voltage compensation, power outage compensation, fault isolation, and bi-directional power flow capability. Widespread implementation of the developed synergies will improve the economics of both renewables and oil and gas projects and can lead to over 50% reduction in the emissions caused by the activities in oil and gas production.
- Project Goals:
The overarching aim of the proposed project is to explore and develop a system of Multi-port Energy Routers using Intelligent Transformers (MERIT) to interface renewable resources and subsea oil and gas (O&G) factories with the High Voltage DC, ‘HVDC’ (or Medium Voltage DC, ‘MVDC’) Grid. This research intends to advance the state-of-the-art power converter hardware and control technologies to enable seamless energy transfer between offshore renewable energy sources, subsea loads (such as in O&G factories) and the DC grid to improve the system efficiency, reliability and availability. The project will also evaluate the integration of fault current limiters including the possibility of adding resistive superconducting fault current limiter (R-SFCL) in series with hybrid DC circuit breakers (HCBs) to lower the high fault current to such a level where circuit breakers can operate safely.
- Tasks:
- Study the different types of loads in an offshore oil & gas (O&G) production system, focusing on the subsea factories and design the electrical architecture of an offshore wind energy farm to interface with the DC grid (Type of Tasks: software and real-time simulation)
- Design a MERIT system to interconnect hybrid renewable energy sources (including wind and fuel cells) with subsea loads (Type of Tasks: software and real-time simulation)
- Explore the integration of additional renewable energy sources – such as floating solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, battery energy storage (BES) and wave energy – with the MERIT system in order to supply 100 % of the demand of the subsea factory using renewable energy resources via HVDC or MVDC link (Type of Tasks: software and real-time simulation)
- Design, build, control and evaluate a lab-scale three-terminal MERIT system using solid state transformer (SSTs) as a proof of concept (Type of Tasks: hardware experiments)
- Investigate the fault limiting performance of a coupled-inductor based fast switching DCCBs (Type of Tasks: software simulations)
- Evaluate fault interruption capability under various network conditions to obtain the optimum configuration with R-SFCL integrated in series with DCCB (Type of Tasks: software simulations)
- Gantt Chart:
- Highlights:
- Completed study of electrical loads in offshore O&G production system
- Simulated system level architecture to interconnect offshore wind farm via DC collection grid
- Task I completed
- Discussion with industry partners on the voltage/power levels, made design updates
- Design and development of the proposed MERIT system to interconnect multiple renewable energy sources with subsea loads
- Simulation of fault interruption of CIHCB and the modular DCCB
- Key Findings:
- Obtained the load profile of a typical subsea field. To supply the power to the subsea field, the required number of wind turbines and backup energy sources were determined
- Developed electrical architecture of a subsea field with an energy router to interface wind power and backup energy sources
- Multiport Energy Router (MER) was realized by using series-parallel combination of medium frequency based Triple Active Bridge Converters to achieve considerable reduction in footprint in the offshore platform
- Developed energy management scheme for the MERIT system facilitates. The intermittency of the wind power can be mitigated
- Optimized number of the wind turbine, solar panels, wave energy converter and battery storage capacity to operate the MERIT system autonomously. Cost of the generated renewable energy will be minimum due to the adopted optimization technique
- Proposed a control scheme for the MER for controlling the power flow among the ports
- Verified the performance of R-SFCL integrated coupled inductor hybrid circuit breaker (CIHCB) topology
- Considering the fast response times and reduction in ratings of main breaker, integration of R-SFCL with proposed DC circuit breakers is an optimal solution for protection of subsea HVDC systems
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 03/31/2022Project Completion Stage:
Offshore drilling activities over the last decades have left thousands of offshore platforms in bad condition and abandoned because of impropriate maintenance and operation. This is in part due to the expense and time-consuming nature of manual inspection and maintenance in the remote offshore environment. Those offshore platforms will not only be re-used in renewable energy sector (thermal, offshore wind, and tidal), but also in space sector. For example, the offshore platform could be used by NASA or space tech companies for rocket launching and landing pads. Some reported news indicate that Space-X will reuse the existing offshore platforms as spaceports for its re-usable rockets. Timely inspection and maintenance of the existing offshore platform is of great interest of Texas economy.
To extend the lifetime of existing platforms, timely inspection and maintenance of platform infrastructures are of great importance. Among those critical components in offshore operations, 1) valves and 2) bolted connections are high priority to assess for failure.
One of the challenges in valve operation is the valve's failure caused by rust. Mild rust can cause the valve's rough operation. Excessive rust may lead to permanent structural damage and cause serious leakage. Preventing a valve's failure requires regular inspection and maintenance. As most of the platforms are designed with a limited area and multi-level structure (Fig. 1), an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) should be capable of making a small radius turning and climb up/down stairs to qualify the job.
Tapping and listening, also called percussion, is an intuitive way to detect structural abnormality, which has been used by us to invent a new approach to monitoring the looseness of bolted connections.
- Additional Media Assets:
- Industry Impact:
A timely inspection of infrastructure, especially topside valves in platforms are thus the key to extend the lifetime of an offshore asset. Current inspection techniques often involve trained human operators and requires excessive amounts of time and money. With state-of-the-art robotic and inspection technologies, such limitations may be remediated and a much-needed extra layer of safety will be added. Robotic enabled valve maintenance not only reduces costs and increases accuracy, but also prevents workers from contacting the leaking valves. Robots do not experience fatigues or loose concentration and can work continuously, and in general robotic approaches are effective and less prone to error.
Combining this work with percussion holds much potential in monitoring the looseness of subsea bolted connection due to its simplicity and suitability with robotics integration.
- Project Goals:
The goal of this project is to develop transformative robotic valve inspection technology that will lead to a time efficient and cost-effective system for valve inspection and maintenance which can extend the life cycle of existing oil platforms. Through the proposed autonomous robotic system (i.e., autonomous ground service) equipped with valve operation and inspection tool, valve anomalies due to mechanical failures will be detected at early stages, which allows operators to make informed decisions on maintenance and repairs of abnormal valves.
This project will also develop robotics enabled percussion approach to subsea connection inspection. Since the Grayloc clamp connectors, with the advantages of compact design, are commonly used in oil and gas industry, in this research both flange type and Grayloc connections under the submerged condition will be experimentally studied. Via a remote operated vehicle (ROV) that is equipped with a hydrophone, a visual-servoing system, and a percussion component, we can detect bolt looseness in subsea flanges and Grayloc connections.
- Tasks:
This research includes the following specific tasks:- Develop a ground service robot that can climb stairs and track lanes in oil platforms
- Develop a valve inspection tool that can detect stuck valves while operating them
- Develop a vision-based lane tracking for the robot to track lanes in oil platforms
- Develop a vision-based recognition algorithm to locate valves for inspection
- Develop a machine-learning based underwater percussion method
- Develop a tapping and listening device to enable percussion based bolted structure inspection
- Conduct comprehensive testing after integration of key components
Ultimately, the project will push the boundaries of what can be accomplished by integrating robotics and structural health monitoring technologies.
- Gantt Chart:
- Highlights:
- Set up testbed and designed new tool for valve operation and inspection
- Demonstrated the percussion method for monitoring flange looseness is effective for under water application
- Demonstrated stair climbing using mobile platform
- Fabricated and tested a new tool for valve operation and inspection
- Programmed a Husky unmanned ground vehicle
- Tested YOLO algorithm for valve detection
- Conducted more test of percussion based bolted structure inspection
- Fabricated a robotic tapping device
- Set up a (32' long x 16' wide x 4.3' deep) research tank for comprehensive testing
- Keyfindings:
- Developed a mobile platform which can climb stairs
- Developed>Developed a valve operation and inspection tool
- Developed a visual serving control for the mobile platform to track the detected lane
- Developed a machine learning based valve detection algorithm
- Developed a machine learning approach to train in-air and in-water impact-induced sound signals
- Developed a deep learning approach to train in-air and in-water impact-induced sound signals
- Classified flange looseness status to five classes using the proposed approaches
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 03/31/2022Project Completion Stage:
Wireless remote operated vehicle (ROV) communications and localization are topics of research in academia and industry due to the challenges the medium imposes on transmission methods. Electromagnetic (EM) waves attenuate severely due to water's high conductivity, while vision-based approaches require line-of-sight and are affected by turbidity.
Acoustic transmissions are currently the dominant technology in use for underwater wireless communications. They can operate at long ranges and can be used for localization. However, they suffer from low data rate, high propagation delay, and high susceptibility to acoustic noise.
Magnetic induction (MI) systems have been proposed as an alternative for underwater localization and communications. MI refers to the near-field component of the magnetic field of a transmitting antenna. Because the field is mostly reactive in this region, it penetrates lossy media better than traditional RF methods that operate in the far-field. MI coils are low-cost devices that could enable more widespread use of automated underwater maintenance systems. Besides communication and localization, MI coils can be used to locate metallic structures by sensing the change in the magnetic field caused by the material. This type of detection could help prevent collisions or identify structures.
MI communications do not suffer from propagation delay and do not require line of sight. However, they have a limited range, a low bandwidth, and directional ambiguity. A hybrid method relying on both MI and acoustic transmissions would leverage both technologies' advantages and mitigate the effect of each method's weaknesses.
MI is a promising technology, but research remains to be made to design a performant, reliable device. For example, electromagnetic interferences can affect MI localization and communications. Solutions to reduce the effect of electromagnetic noise must be studied.
Underwater vehicles need high accuracy, shortrange non-optical localization. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are relied on for subsea inspection, maintenance, and repair of structures where access by human personnel is dangerous. Work on subsea trees requires the ROV to accurately approach and manipulate controls. When the ROV needs to recharge or share high bandwidth information, the ROV must dock with subsea structures. These types of maneuvers require precise localization, which is often performed using cameras and optical tracking. Collisions during these activities are dangerous for both the structure and the ROVs. Optical methods using lasers and/or a visual fiducial system have some limitations, especially in debris-filled or silt-laden water. Additionally, optical systems require a line-of-sight between the sensor and the target.
Competing technologies include acoustic localization and EM-based localization. Acoustic communications are commonly used for long range localization (meter to kilometers), but even the best accuracy of Long-baseline (LBL) systems is in the ±0.01 m range. Acoustic localization is limited by acoustic noise, and many operations (drilling, blowout) are acoustically noisy.
- Additional Media Assets:
- Industry Impact:
Discussions with commercial advisors helped us outline some of the shortcomings of current EM based localization systems, including low range due to high attenuation and potential interference from metallic structures.
We have conducted preliminary studies on the use of triaxial magnetic induction (MI) coil antennas for localization at short distances between robots. At this range, MI antennas are affordable to produce and deploy (no moving parts), and have strong, high bandwidth signals that do not require line of sight. Their unique capabilities may be particularly suited for missions that require robots to dock with subsea structures.
- Project Goals:
This project will focus on magnetic induction (MI) 1) for high-accuracy, short-range, non-optical localization of remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV), and 2) in conjunction with acoustic modems to optimize communications between a maneuvering ROV and a sensor buoy.
This project proposes to solve several key challenges that need to be investigated to achieve high accuracy underwater localization and performant communication.
MI coils can sense the change in magnetic field distribution caused by metal structures, especially steel and other ferromagnetic materials. These coils can provide an additional sensing modality for structure identification and anti-collision with pipes and other subsea structures. Our proposal will explore this sensing modality.
The proposed project will also theoretically study the use of MI in conjunction with an acoustic system for the communication between ROVs and underwater sensor nodes. The ROV can utilize MI to communicate with nodes close to it, and acoustics to communicate with those further away. In cases where the environment considerably hinders acoustic communication with certain nodes, the AUV can also automatically switch to MI transmissions. This has the potential of speeding up data transfer with a sensor network and reducing mission time or providing increased robustness of data acquisition.
Figure 1: Our robots at NASA's NBL. Our previous project studied localization and collision-avoidance between two robots using triaxial antennas. Like all EM based systems, MI communications decay exponentially with distance, making them practical for high accuracy, short range positioning. The NBL facility enables accurate ground-truth measurements of robot position and orientation using computer vision (shown here). The NBL also has large-scale submerged metallic structures, which could be used in the fourth part of this study.
- Tasks:
In this project we propose to explore the design and implementation of a system that enables high-accuracy positioning with ROVs at close distances. Our goal is to produce theoretical and experimental insight towards the use of triaxial coil antennas to aid with subsea docking and localization. This study will test procedures for docking and maneuvering using triaxial magnetic induction. In this 12-month study, we propose to:- Study short distance, high-accuracy MI-based localization
- Research software and hardware approaches to attenuate EM interference caused by the ROV thrusters and electronics
- Identify limitations of competing optical, acoustic, and RF localization technologies and compare these solutions with the proposed new method
- Investigate MI detection/tracking of steel structures
- Investigate the effect of updating the MI antenna design to be conformal to the frame of an AUV, with the goal of minimizing footprint of the antennas
- Gantt Chart:
- Highlights:
- Conformal antennas have been constructed, waterproofed, and mounted on the remotely operated vehicle (ROV)
- Multi-feedback bandpass filters work well at specified frequencies for electromagnetic interference (EMI) filtering
- For MI-based Localization, the cable penetrator was fixed to the Doppler Velocity Logger (DVL) so it can be attached to the ROV’s electronics enclosure
- A circuit was designed to oversample a received MI signal. This circuit uses a logarithmic amplifier like our previous approach to deal with the extensive dynamic range
- We implemented Mᴀᴛʟᴀʙ functions that can compute the acoustic absorption coefficient as a function of the frequency and the acoustic path loss as a function of the transmission distance. These functions will be used to help select the most efficient transmission method (e.g. acoustic, MI, frequency range) depending on the distance and environment
- Keyfindings:
- Derived methods to estimate relative position and orientation of two sensor systems using only unsigned amplitude measurements.
- Demonstrated that conformal electro-magnetic coils enable longer distance communication with a small impact on robot size and drag.
- Demonstrated image transmission between underwater magnetic induction antennas.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 04/30/2022Project Completion Stage:
Humans have created robots to help us perform tasks underwater. It will not be too long before we will see robots fully automate deepwater Gulf of Mexico exploration, production, and decommissioning. Subsea industry is quickly moving toward deeper waters, complex, challenging, and dynamic working environments, while requiring the highest level of safety. Tasks that have been historically undertaken by workers in shallow waters are now performed by Remotely Operated underwater Vehicles (ROV) at water depths that humans cannot support. Work-class ROVs (WROV), in particular, are being used for surveillance as well as for intervention.
ROVs suffer from several limitations including requirement of a large operating crew, a need of a dynamically positioned surface vessel, tether management, and high cost mobilization and demobilization. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) are now emerging with new capabilities and technologies that could make them more efficient and more cost effective than ROVs. Hydrocarbon development environments of deep and ultra-deep water in the Gulf of Mexico and other regions in the world require AUVs that can autonomously operate in confined spaces and can perform forceful interactions with the assets. Hence, new paradigms in shape, autonomy, sensing and communication and physical capabilities are needed to make AUVs the tool of choice for deepwater industry.
Currently, subsea robots are built rigid and neutrally buoyant so that their volume remains unchanged despite the changing fluidic pressure. Although they are normally big and heavy, underwater service robots can take advantages of their neural buoyant state to save energy when they are maneuvering and operating in subsea environments. However, when ROVs perform tasks such as picking and placing tools or collecting disassembled parts in offshore asset's monitoring, repairing, and decommissioning, they will deviate from the neutral buoyancy state. Under such circumstances, the service robots must constantly actuate to maintain their depth, which is energy inefficient as was recently demonstrated by the PIs. AUVs rely on their thrusters and possibly a ballast to actively control buoyancy. This is achieved by thruster and pump control. If AUVs are involved in forceful interactions including lifting objects or executing a forceful act, thrusters and a ballast may not be fully adequate for real-time buoyancy control.
- Additional Media Assets:
- Industry Impact:
Constantly monitoring and repairing subsea infrastructures and equipment play important roles in extending the lifetime of those multi-million-dollar offshore assets. Decommissioning of offshore assets also call for underwater service robots to disassemble the subsea infrastructures and cleanup the sea floor environment.
Fine distributed buoyancy control, which is not feasible with current thruster/ballast mechanisms, will enable adaptive maneuvering and forceful interaction with the environment in confined spaces similar to how marine swimmers do. A combination of the traditional thruster/ballast mechanism for gross buoyancy and motion, and the proposed soft robotics mechanism (fuel cells/water electrolysers) for fine and distributed buoyancy will undoubtedly provide AUV's with unprecedented capabilities. The broader impact of this research includes the opportunities created in exploring and expanding solid state fuel cell/electrolyzing technology as a soft robotics mechanism to address immediate exploration and production challenges in the Gulf of Mexico. The results of this research will be valuable not only to international deepwater oil and gas markets, but also to subsea renewable energies and subsea mining.
- Project Goals:
The goal of this project is to develop more energy efficient underwater service robots by equipping them with a variable buoyancy system to fine-tune buoyancy, allowing them to remain neutrally buoyant and change their orientation during underwater operations (resident AUVs) and inspections with almost free consumed energy. Inspired by how marine animals control buoyancy in both open sea and confined spaces, the proposed research focuses on the problem of fine buoyancy control by exploring new enabling ideas from soft robotics. The objective of buoyancy control sought in this research would for example enable an underwater service robot shown in Figure 2 to pick up a load to measure its weight or carry it to a desired location for further processing.
- Tasks:
- Develop Buoyancy Control Device Enabled by Reversible Fuel Cells
- Task 1.1: Design a self-enclosed buoyancy control device to house an IPMC electrolyzer, a micro fuel cell, and two gas chambers. Demonstrate an open-loop control test
- Task 1.2: Develop a back-stepping nonlinear control with a nonlinear observer
- Task 1.3: Demonstrate an close-loop control of the BCD which can oat and sink with a large depth change (more than 3 m)
- Develop an Underwater Service Robot
- Task 2.1: Develop two water-proof robotic grippers
- Task 2.2: Integrate two BCDs and robotic grippers into the AUV
- Task 2.3: Open-loop control test of underwater service robot
- Modeling and Control
- Task 3.1: Develop 3D nonlinear dynamic model of the service robot
- Task 3.2: Develop depth control for the service robot
- Task 3.3: Develop orientation control of the service robot
- Comprehensive Test at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL)
- Senior Design Competition Between UH and Rice
- Develop Buoyancy Control Device Enabled by Reversible Fuel Cells
- Gantt Chart:
- Highlights:
- Developed a gas consumption rate control
- Fabricated a service robot integrating a blue ROV, four BCDs, and a robotic gripper
- Developed a nonlinear dynamic model of the service robot
- Developed depth and orientation control using both hard and soft actuators for the service robot
- Validated the control in simulation
- Keyfindings:
- Developed a volume-to-electricity engine enabled by reversible fuel cell
- Developed buoyancy control device (BCD) using that engine
- Developed a service robot with BCDs and robotic gripper
- Developed a 6-DOF dynamic model for the service robot
- Developed a hybrid control of hard and soft actuators for both depth and orientation control.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/31/22Project Completion Stage:
Pipeline networks are the most efficient method to transport oil, gas, and other liquids, but leaks are common and oftentimes go undetected. Leaks can result in billions of dollars of property damage, represent significant losses of revenue, and present significant safety challenges. Pipeline networks rely on a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to monitor changes in pressure, flowrate, and other pipeline characteristics3 along with a Computational Pipeline Monitoring System (CPM) to analyze the data and detect leaks. However, a recent study found that the CPM could only identify 19 % of pipeline leaks. These failures include large leaks, especially for complex pipeline networks with multiple entry points.
- Industry Impact:
The novelty of the work is in the development of a new, low-cost, wireless sensor for selective chemical detection in deep sea environments. Prior work has not explored the combination of organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) or thin film transistors (TFTs) with molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for selective chemical sensing or the development and testing of OECTs and TFTs in seawater. The results of this work will demonstrate a proof-of-principle of versatile, low-cost sensors that can aid in the early detection for leak and spillage detection.
Altogether, this work will demonstrate a novel platform for continuous, real-time monitoring of chemicals and contaminants underwater. This will enable more rapid detection of leaks and contaminants during deep sea operations. Furthermore, the sensors proposed are compact and easy to fabricate, resulting in low-cost devices that can be fabricated to scale and replaced when necessary.
- Project Goals:
To address the failure of CPM to identify leaks, we will develop a precise and sensitive amperometric sensor platform based on molecular-level recognition by molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) and electronic transduction through organic thin film transistors (TFTs) and organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). We will build a sophisticated real-time sensor for chemical binding events that can be used to detect the presence of specific chemicals in the aqueous environment. In the proposed research, we plan to create and use a modified electrochemical sensor model to investigate the performance of sensors at low temperatures and subsea conditions.
- Tasks:
- Design and testing of MIP layers
- Fabrication and testing of OECTs and TFTs
- Integrate OECTs and TFTs with MIPs and analyze response to target chemicals
- Test integrated sensors in the presence of interfering species
- Develop a model for the response of OECTs and TFTs
- Gantt Chart:
- Significant Findings:
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/31/22Project Completion Stage:
Li-ion batteries (LIBs) have long been limited to ambient temperatures and the internal electrochemical reactions and operating LIB’s has proven to cause thermal fluctuations that have led to battery explosions and safety issues. While past efforts to address these issues were focused on thermal management strategies, we have found that the performance and safety of LIBs at both low and high temperatures is inherently deep-rooted to their respective materials components, such as electrode and electrolyte materials, and the so-called solid-electrolyte interphases. In particular, there is no existing electrolyte chemistry that covers large temperature ranges, and devices are only stable and reliable at room temperature. Our group has successfully demonstrated that the complete replacement of a conventional liquid electrolyte and the polymeric separator with a single quasi-solid composite electrolyte can extend the temperature range of supercapacitors to 200oC and of LIBs to 150oC. These quasi-solid composites constitute a new class of electrolytes and are formed by the combination of ceramic nanomaterials and high-boiling point organic solvents and room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs). Such an electrolyte system allows us to utilize high energy density metallic lithium as the anode without compromising on safety.
- Industry Impact:
Materials and devices used in oil and gas (O&G) production and exploration experience extreme environmental conditions. With the continuous upsurge in demand for autonomous devices, there has been an increased need for energy storage systems that is high-energy and high-power that can operate safely under the most aggressive conditions.
- Project Goals:
The overarching scope of the proposed project is to develop and fabricate high-energy and high-power quasi-solid lithium batteries that can operate under a wide range of temperatures and pressure. Further, we plan to explore the possibilities of such batteries for various conditions including thermal/pressure fluctuations, leakage currents, self-discharge etc. and thus these devices provide safe and reliable power supply for extended operation of offshore infrastructure and continuous uninterrupted production from Deepwater facilities. More specifically the scope includes:
- Optimization of quasi-solid lithium battery by balancing power and energy. Use of high energy density cathodes such as NCA and/or NMC against metallic lithium to build high energy/power lithium batteries
- Compatibility studies of electrodes/quasi-solid electrolytes and electrochemical testes to understand battery life, stability (self-discharge) at high temp./pressure
- Tasks:
- Combination of cathode and quasi-solid electrolyte systems
- Electrode assembly and quasi-solid-state batteries fabrication
- Electrochemical performance
- Gantt Chart:
- Significant Findings:
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 08/31/22Project Completion Stage:
In 2017, SSI received funding from National Academies of Science to study the dynamic effects of free‐bubble gas formation within deepwater marine drilling risers – a major issue for the offshore industry and emphasized in the CSB Macondo report. Over the past four years, researchers have:
- Elucidated the reason for the destructive potential and seemingly sudden nature of gas kick events
- Developed a new fast and sensitive detection method
- Carried out experimental demonstration
- Developed guidelines for implementation
The work produced several papers and in 2021 was highlighted at SPE, NAS and OTC. Please contact SSI if you’d like more information about this work.
- Zhou, G. and Prosperetti, A. Dripping instability of a two-dimensional liquid film under an inclined plane, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2022
- Zhou, G., Leach, L., Denduri, V.S., Wong, G.K., Krishnamoorti, R. and Prosperetti, A., Pressure difference method for gas kick detection in risers, Journal of Petroleum Engineering, 2021
- Zhou, G. and Prosperetti, A. Faster Taylor bubbles, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2021
- Leach, C., Zhou, G., Denduluri, V., Wong, G., Krishnamoorti, R, Prosperetti, A. A new fundamental understanding of gas in the drilling riser, Offshore Technology Conference, 2021, https://doi.org/10.4043/31248-MS
- Zhou, G. and Prosperetti, A. Capillary waves on falling films, Physical Review Fluids, volme 5, art. number 114005, 2020, doi 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.5.114005
- Zhou, G. and Prosperetti, A. A numerical study of mass transfer from laminar liquid films, Journal of Fluid Mechanics volume 902, art number A10, 2020
- Zhou, G. and Prosperetti, A. Violent expansion of a rising Taylor bubble, Physical Review Fluids, 2019
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 11/30/2021Project Completion Stage:
Such events are ideally mitigated by timely maintenance and inspection of subsea pipeline structures. However, such routine actions can be excessively costly and when divers are involved, the issue of safety becomes a major consideration. Furthermore, depending on the skill and experience of human operators, certain critically damaged components may be missed. Failures that occur from damages that were overlooked by inspection routines can have catastrophic consequences, leading to hundreds of fatalities and billions of dollars of damage over the past two decades.
The events have inspired the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) to issue a recent public report highlighting the need for better detection of damage in subsea infrastructure, especially for bolted structures. Thus, the goal of this project is to develop transformative robotic and SmartTouch sensing technology, that will lead to a time efficient and cost-effective system for underwater pipeline inspection.
To achieve the research objective, we will investigate the following tasks:
- Develop SmartTouch sensing for pipeline structure inspection
- Design dexterous robotic manipulator for remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to deliver SmartTouch sensors to complex pipeline structures
- Develop force feedback sensing and grasping control for manipulator
- After integration of key components, conduct comprehensive testing
The tool integrates state-of-the-art robotic manipulator controls for ROV and the latest structural health monitoring and inspection methods to automate pipeline inspection, including loosened connectors and deformed pipelines inspection. With the developed technology of pipeline structures will be safer, more economical, and more accurate. Completion of the proposed solution will open the doors to applications for inspection of other kinds of subsea structures. With proper implementation, the rate of subsea pipeline failure and related accidents will decrease, and subsea operations will be free to expand at faster rate than before.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 10/31/2020Project Completion Stage:
Separate to this industry need, NASA is planning beyond-Earth orbit missions involving human habitats that will be unmanned for the majority of their lives. NASA currently seeks to understand how robots can assist in maintaining these habitats prior to, and following, crew missions. NASA awarded Northeastern University a Valkyrie humanoid robot for the work in their Robotics and Intelligent Vehicles Research Laboratory. SSI will collaborate with the PIs, Professors Taskin Padir and Robert Platt of Northeastern University with the objective to facilitate a testing opportunity for the SmartTouch integration with their Valkyrie robot. The goal of this proposed project is to increase the ability of robotic assets to manage the physical operations and tasks necessary for both oil platform and spacecraft habitat maintenance. In support of this goal, the specific technical objective of the project is to advance the autonomous skills of dexterous robots capable of performing these remote tasks. This will assist remote human operators by reducing their cognitive workload during operations, and promises to increase task efficiency and improve safety at remote sites in the future.
It is recognized that robots will not be completely autonomous in the near future, and therefore will not be eliminating all human support of NUIs. However, baseline autonomous skills that allow remote robots to perceive their environment and manipulate objects within that environment will significantly enhance the ability to perform highly complex tasks without a physical human presence at remote installations. Better manipulation for fine, dexterous tasks, including soft robotics and drones, and advanced perception to decrease the need for real-time human intervention will facilitate a more timely integration of robots into existing platform operations, while improving the survivability of unmanned space-based habitats. SSI is currently exploring collaboration opportunities with local energy companies and other governmental agencies in similar technology areas. If these partnerships come to fruition, the work proposed here will leverage this synergy to demonstrate even further advanced capabilities.
This project will address the following specific research actions:
- Opening door tool design and pickup
- Design door opening robot and open the door
- Transition through the door
- Comprehensive testing: Fabricating the door fixture and testing
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 10/31/2020Project Completion Stage:
The Robotic Swarm Control Lab and collaborators have designed and tested tri-axial antennas for underwater AUVs and ROVs [1]. Pairs of these antennas could be implemented to rapidly measure relative 6-DOF range and orientation between pairs of AUVs and/or AUVs and underwater assets.
This study will test procedures for collision avoidance using triaxial magnetic induction and computer vision. In this study, we propose to:
- Design TX/RX Control Circuits for Triaxial Antennas
- Generate 3D Models for Transmission Power Between Antenna Pairs
- Validate models through underwater tests at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab
- Design safe avoidance control laws for ROVs equipped with new sensors
The main goal is to lay the theoretical foundations and validate a hardware prototype for a multi-sensor navigation-aid system that will efficiently and economically provide collision avoidance for multiple robots deployed for high-risk subsea inspection jobs. We will focus on vision control as well as magnetic induction for the short-ranged path-planning and communication required to fulfill oil rig inspection job requirements. The magnetic induction system will exploit range and bearing information, as well as transmit high bandwidth relative localization data when robots are nearby. This will enable sharing data gathered by alternate sensing modalities. For this proposal, we will share camera data from multiple cameras located in our ROV.
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Magnetic Induction Remotely Operated Vehicles for Subsea Collision Avoidance
Dr. Aaron Becker
Dr. Aaron Becker's Robotic Swarm Control Lab at the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering tests subsea ROV transmission and receiving technology at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab. Research is supported by the Subsea Systems Institute at the University of Houston.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 10/31/2020Project Completion Stage:
Through its unique combination of sensor arrays, locomotive capabilities and dexterous manipulators, the Valkyrie possessed multiple functions and is designed to operate in harsh or degraded human-engineered environments. One such demonstrated function was the ability to interact with construction, such as scaffolding. While the ability to assemble human made structures is crucial to the humanitarian objectives of the Valkyrie or any other similar robots, equally important is the ability to accurately inspect and maintain existing infrastructures.
Due to the difficulty of using conventional inspection tools via remotely controlled robotic manipulators, there is no easy way to know for certain that the structural work performed by the robot is viable (e.g. bolt may not be tightened adequately at a key connection). Recently, researchers at the University of Houston have developed a non-invasive SmartTouch inspection tool designed for use by subsea ROVs/AUVs to easily inspect connections with a simple touch.
With further work, the SmartTouch technology can be adapted for use in robots such as the Valkyrie with far reaching advantages in their mission to benefit society. Thus, this proposal briefly outlines the research that can make such an adaptation possible.
Overall, the goal of the proposed work is to integrate SmartTouch into the manipulators of the Valkyrie to enable one-touch inspection capabilities. The research will encompass the following tasks:
- Sensor Design
- Force Feedback Control
- Comprehensive Testing at UH
- Integration and Testing with a Valkyrie simulator at UH
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 10/31/2020Project Completion Stage:
Several research groups will collaborate in this project, namely, Haleh Ardebili at the University of Houston, Rafael Verduzco at Rice University, and William Walker at NASA. All experimental and computational modeling efforts are dedicated to developing lithium ion batteries that can deliver effective power under subsea environment.
This work will pave the way for novel and improved energy storage solutions such as flexible batteries for subsea applications and expand their electrochemical performances, allowing the batteries to operate at temperatures as low as 0° Celsius. This device will reliably provide a safer environment for the exploration and production of oil in subsea conditions, and to deliver high- power for a range of subsea needs.
The specific goals of this project are (a) design and fabricate batteries that provide steady and long-term power and voltage at low temperature (UH); (b) Boost the performance of the battery through enhancing the battery materials properties through novel material designs and high resolution and rigorous characterization techniques (UH and Rice) (c) develop thermo-electrochemical model and conduct the simulation at low temperature to validate the experimental results (UH and NASA).
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 3/31/2020Project Completion Stage:
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) contains a major infrastructure of pipelines and subsea facilities supporting exploration and production activities. GOM operators will benefit from more robust communications resulting in improved real time monitoring capability and a significant reduction in costs related to subsea data transmission. Industry support will be provided by OneSubsea, APS Technology and Halliburton.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 8/31/2019Project Completion Stage:
The program will advance several aspects of AUV technological challenges in autonomy, sensing, and physical capabilities. Specifically, advances will be made in thruster technology and sensing which will enable high maneuverability in tight spaces. The research approach will leverage advances made by the Robotics & Intelligent Systems Lab at Rice University in swimming robotic inspection of above- ground oil storage tanks, and NASA’s robotics, automation, and guidance technologies, and its Neutral Buoyancy Lab infrastructure.
The objective of this initial Phase 1 funding award consists of two levels with a final goal of establishing a future sound and comprehensive program in autonomous AUVs for subsea energy applications with engagement and endorsement of major operators. The specific goals of the project are as follows:
- Program 1: Organize a workshop to engage industry in overviewing the state of the art of AUV technology and build a collaborative relationship with operators in subsea energy applications to define the new challenges of subsea AUVs. The objective is to identify the end user mission requirements, the status of AUV research and technology development within industry and the target areas for defining the future research objectives for this project.
- Program 2: Build an updated, more functional and more robust version of the Rice University RiSYS Lab swimming robot prototype shown below to be tested at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab. In Phase 1 of the project, the robot’s hydrodynamic shape (referred to as Problem 1 in original proposal document), thrusters and their configurations (Problem 2 in original proposal document), and design of new bidirectional thrusters (Problem 3 in original proposal document) will not be addressed. This grant funding will be used to build one (1), updated AUV prototype from the existing unit.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 8/31/2018Project Completion Stage:
Thus, monitoring oil and gas flow in pipelines (and risers and sub-bottom casings) is critical to assess conduit integrity and as well as optimize overall production performance. This proposal focuses on reservoir characterization, underwater communication and infrastructure integrity assurance. This work will develop a proof-of-concept marine, fiber-optic vibration sensing system – an instrumented flow loop for the lab and field. Along with associated analysis and interpretation methods, this system will provide learnings for improved subsea reservoir monitoring and production. Industry support will come in the form of collaborations with Apache Corp., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Optasense and Halliburton.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 8/31/2018Project Completion Stage:
The goal of this project is to directly address one of the critical failures that occurred during this major accident by developing a combination of two new technologies using batteries and high-power supercapacitors. The batteries provide the trickle charge to the high-power supercapacitors which provide the necessary power to activate the blind shear ram. This work will pave the way for improved energy storage and power supply solutions that enable not only next generation blowout preventers to reliably operate and provide a safer environment for the exploration and production of oil in subsea environments, but to provide electrical high-power for a range of subsea equipment needs.
The specific goals are to:
- Design and fabricate high power, high voltage nanoporous nickel fluoride (NP-NF) thin-film supercapacitors
- Design and fabricate high capacity, thin-film Li ion batteries to trickle charge the supercapacitors
- Stack and integrate NP-NF thin-film supercapacitors with thin-film Li ion batteries
- Develop a prototype supercapacitor-battery unit for electrical testing under subsea environmental conditions at 16,000 psi
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 8/31/2018Project Completion Stage:
The scientific impact of this work centers on the creation of an Information Synthesis (IS) monitoring knowledge base applicable to a broad range of subsea systems. The proposed IS technology complements the data fusion knowledge by synthesizing information via dynamic adaptive models. Using the adapted model coefficients, BOP health and remaining useful life estimations will be recovered in a rigorous mathematical formulation.
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 3/31/2018Project Completion Stage:
Marine Drilling Hazard Mitigation and Production Facility Monitoring Using Seismic and Sonar Imaging
The proposed monitoring system consists of three components:
- Fiber-optic motion sensors (distributed acoustic systems - DAS) on the riser to monitor hydrocarbon flow and pressure transients. The riser is a flow line from the sea floor to the surface platform and forms part of an existing production facility. There is no additional funding to the project for this component.
- Ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS) arrayed around the well-head to detect gas and over-pressure zones, microseismic events, and sediment deformation.
- Active sonar scanners near the BOP to create 3D images of the wellhead vicinity and possible hydrocarbon leaks.
These instruments would continuously monitor and provide information to assess drilling progress, facility integrity, production state, and anomalies. The project will develop a proof-of-concept monitoring system for the early detection and assessment of drilling or production problems. It will thus inform about the design and capability of a full field system which will contribute substantially toward the safety and efficacy of deep-water operations.
The specific goals of the first phase of the project are as follows:
- Host an industry workshop
- Investigate and confirm the application of seismic instrumentation for the monitoring of the integrity of drilling and production systems through the use of:
- Distributed Acoustic Systems (DAS)
- Sonar
- Ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS)
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Status: AWARD END DATE: 12/31/2016Project Completion Stage: