Neuchâtel (Switzerland). EU funded project “Photonics sensing platform for process optimisation in the oil industry”, in short HYDROPTICS, had its official kick-off meeting on the 5th December 2019. The projects goal is to increase the competitiveness of the EU oil industry sector, by providing high-accuracy oil-in-water analyzer based on state of the art mid-IR light sources and spectroscopy techniques. The project has a duration of 42 months (1st December 2019 – 31st May 2023) and a total budget of 7.5 Million Euros, bringing together 10 European research and academic institutions, industries and SMEs from the oil, spectroscopy, IT, and instrumentation domains.
The EU is the second largest producer of petroleum products in the world after the United States, with a crude refining capacity of about 15 million barrels per day, representing 16% of total global capacity. Technology for oil production needs to be constantly refined and improved for competitive oil production in Europe as well as by European companies overseas. In both up- and down stream processing, water is of crucial importance. Often it is the water quality that has a decisive effect on the overall efficiency of upstream operations in Europe as well as in downstream oil processing. Therefore, having a reliable, cost-effective, and high-accuracy monitoring of produced water quality is of utmost importance for oil industry
HYDROPTICS will develop and apply advanced photonic components as key enabling technologies for optimizing most critical steps in oil production as well as to control downstream processing routines for final mineral oil product development. In this regard process water has been identified as a key product of high relevance both in upstream and downstream process monitoring. It will also elaborate how data provided by the advanced sensors can be combined with readily available process data, and a digital twin of the process apparatus to gain in-depth process understanding. Digitalisation of process data, data fusion, machine learning and artificial intelligence shall enable a new level of process optimization yielding high and constant product quality despite fluctuating process conditions.
The Consortium, comprising of 10 partner organisations, is led by the company Alpes Lasers (Neuchâtel, Switzerland). The consortium is balanced in terms of competencies and involvement of industrial and SME partners: Quantared Technologies (AT), IRsweep (CH), DBC Europe (BE), OMV Exploration & Production GmbH (AT), and Turkiye Petrol Rafinerileri Anonim Sirketi (TR); and Academic research institutions and Research and Technology Organisations: Technische Universitaet Wien (AT), Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (BE), Silicon-Austria Labs (AT), National Technical University of Athens – NTUA (EL).
Project Details
EU Project No:871529
Start Date:01/12/2019
Project Duration:42 months
For additional information please contact the Project Coordinator at Alpes Lasers:
Dr. Antoine Muller: antoine.muller@alpeslasers.ch, +41 32 729 95 10
Dr. Sargis Hakobyan: sargis.hakobyan@alpeslasers.ch, +41 32 729 95 10
