The School of Natural & Computing Sciences at the University of Aberdeen have recently developed a research-based relationship with Blue Gentoo. The collaboration highlights how the University of Aberdeen is actively collaborating with local SMEs to develop new relationships and to help the Oil & Gas industry innovate and grow.
Blue Gentoo were in the first Grey Matters cohort at Elevator in Aberdeen, a successful entrepreneurship initiative which aimed to harness the experience, knowledge and innovation of senior oil and gas professionals who are either facing redundancy or have been made redundant.
Having been chosen as one of 10 technology start-ups selected for OGTC’s prestigious TechX Pioneer technology accelerator programme, Blue Gentoo represents the latest stage in a success story of innovation, collaboration, and business growth in Aberdeen.
“This innovative joint research and development project exemplifies the mutual benefits achievable by universities and businesses in bringing together academic expertise in the industrial application of leading-edge software technologies and professional expertise in the solution of challenging production problems in the Oil and Gas industry. We aim to use such projects to contribute to our primary mission of making innovation available to industry at large and, in so doing, to create wider professional opportunities for our students.”
Dr Ernesto Compatangelo, School of Natural & Computing Sciences, University of Aberdeen
Phil Bremner, a University of Aberdeen alumnus, founded Blue Gentoo after a long career in the oil & gas industry and immediately saw the benefits of working with the University.
“The University team’s experience in similar AI deep learning projects gave us great confidence in the end product. From the initial meeting we got the sense that this was the right team for us to work with. Our hope is that this project will also offer students and researchers an opportunity for work post project and certainly gives Blue Gentoo a unique product that will have a significant impact within the O&G industry on a global basis.”
Phil Bremner, CEO, Blue Gentoo Ltd
“We aim to use such projects to contribute to our primary mission of making innovation available to industry at large and, in so doing, to create wider professional opportunities for our students.”
This project represents an innovative development that will be of benefit to the wider oil & gas industry and has been funded by the Oil & Gas Innovation centre (OGIC).
Ian Phillips, CEO of OGIC, said: “This project has the potential to solve a real industry challenge and the fit between Blue Gentoo and the team at the University of Aberdeen was quickly evident. There are a number of companies out there that have the skills and expertise to develop ground-breaking technologies, but possibly don’t have the capital to get their ideas off the ground. That’s why it’s vitally important that support is given to small technology-focused businesses, so they can help push our industry forward, support the UKCS and export their offerings to the international market.”
The industry challenge is to prevent hydrate formation, a major subsea flow assurance problem faced during the extraction of hydrocarbons using high-pressurised pipelines positioned in cold waters. The most reliable technique to address hydrate formation is to remove water in oil and gas pipelines with dehydrators such as MonoEthylene Glycol (MEG).
The expertise and research ability within the School of Natural & Computing Sciences at the University of Aberdeen was well placed to collaborate with Blue Gentoo to achieve Intelligent Hydrate Platform (iHP) project outcomes.
iHP will automatically control MEG injection by monitoring hydrocarbon parameters, calculating both the MEG required and any subsequent injection adjustments in real time and without routinely human intervention.
Dr Ernesto Compatangelo and Prof Wamberto Vasconcelos will develop and implement Artificial Intelligence technologies for use within industrial-quality software to provide a suite of management functionalities allowing iHP to learn effective human and computer-devised injection strategies for hydrate prevention, reusing them in the appropriate circumstances and providing a detailed justification of the adopted strategy.
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