Innovative Engineering Solutions Improve Efficiency in the Offshore Oil Industry
Hi Friends! Hope you’re well today. I welcome you on board. In this post, I’ll detail how Innovative Engineering Solutions Improve Efficiency in the Offshore Oil Industry.
Despite ambitious global goals to reduce carbon emissions, fossil fuels such as gas and oil still provided
over 80% of the world’s energy in 2019. The petroleum industry is still vital for global energy supplies, and, according to the International Labor Organization, directly employs almost 6 million people around the world.
To improve levels of safety and productivity while at the same time meeting ambitious targets for a low-carbon future, the industry is making significant changes. Innovative technologies are required to maximize the recovery of fossil fuels while at the same time reduce the environmental impact of extraction, and improve the safety and efficiency of offshore rigs.
The work of engineers from a
range of specialist engineering fields contributes to cutting-edge developments to improve construction, extraction, and production. However, as offshore rigs become increasingly digitized, it is technopreneurs and electronic engineers who develop solutions to safely maintain equipment, minimize unnecessary emissions, and ultimately improve the safety of offshore oil rigs through increased automation.
Maintaining Safe and Reliable Systems
Working on offshore rigs is dangerous and accidents and injuries are common. In 2018, there were
over 170 injuries reported within the offshore energy industry located on the US Outer Continental Shelf.
From the design of a rig to the installation of generators, electronic engineers are accountable for ensuring power and distribution systems are maintained and operate reliably. Although the majority of injuries on a rig occur through the use of heavy equipment, fires and explosions can be triggered by faulty electrical equipment.
This can lead to serious and potentially devastating injuries as workers are electrocuted, burned, or even crushed. Specialist
offshore accident attorneys can provide support when accidents and injuries occur. Improving training for roughnecks and drillers and minimizing the risks from equipment failure must be a priority for electronic engineers.
The Benefits of Unmanned Rigs
With the increased use of automation on rigs, the risk to personnel is considerably reduced. Already, the majority of engineers involved with oil rigs are based onshore, and through the use of innovative and cutting edge technologies, removing the other workers is now possible.
For several years, the technology for remote surveillance and control has been implemented in the offshore industry, but with increasingly automated control systems, fully remote operations are becoming a reality.
Enabling more remote operations has become essential recently, and the pressures of the past year have prompted the increased development and adoption of AI on rigs. As well as monitoring systems, robot roughnecks will be able to interact with equipment, inspecting machinery, and carry out simple physical tasks.
This increased automation will drastically improve safety levels and significantly lower production costs. Efficiency is also increased as remote sensors and controls allow for a quicker and more targeted response to any changes, resulting in fewer shutdowns.
Implementing Smart Technology to Enhance Efficiency
A drop in the price of oil has encouraged companies to look at innovative ways to save money. Other digital technologies including smart sensors have
increased the production from oilfields by 6% while at the same time significantly lowering running costs.
Offshore oil rigs have increasingly been fitted with sensors that can measure sensitive field conditions such as temperature and pressure. This information is then sent to engineers on land who can quickly make necessary adjustments to equipment.
Other environmental changes such as commonly occurring methane leaks can also be detected remotely with the use of cloud-based machine learning software.
Environmental Engineers Reduce Harmful Emissions
Minimizing the amount of methane leaked into the atmosphere is one of the best ways for the industry to reduce emissions, and preventing waste from leaks is just one of the roles of environmental engineers within the petroleum industry. Sophisticated AI and unmanned rigs may improve efficiency and safety levels on offshore rigs.
However, the negative impact of the oil and gas industry on the environment is still enormous. Roughly
15% of carbon emissions associated with the petroleum industry is created during extraction and production processes, and several major oil companies have promised to reduce these emissions in the range between 50% and 65% by 2050.
To help to achieve this, environmental engineers look at ways to reduce the need for controlled burning of oil and gas, known as flaring. In addition, the emissions created by building new rigs and other developments can be reduced by using low-carbon electricity from renewable energy.
The petroleum industry is making significant changes to adapt to a safer and cleaner low-carbon future. These changes require increasingly innovative technology to improve exploration and drilling in challenging environments, lower the costs of extraction and production, and create automated and unmanned rigs, where costly downtime is reduced and the risk to personnel is minimized.
That’s all for today. Hope you find this article helpful. If you have any questions, you can approach me in the section below. I’d love to help you the best way I can. Thank you for reading the article.
Introduction to Arduino MKR WAN 1310
Hi Guys! Hope you’re well today. I welcome you on board. In this post today, I’ll walk you through the Introduction to Arduino MKR WAN 1310.
The Arduino MKR WAN 1310 includes Lora connectivity that can perform very long-range transmission operations consuming low power.
This device is an ideal pick for the hobbyists requiring to develop IoT devices using the minimum networking experience using low power devices.
The MKR WAN 1300 is incorporated with the Microchip® SAMD21 which is the low-power processor, the MKR family’s characteristic crypto chip (the ECC508), and the Murata CMWX1ZZABZ LoRa® module.
Before you read further, I recommend you have a look at
Introduction to Arduino Nano Every and
Arduino MKR Vidor 4000 that I have uploaded previously.
I suggest you read this post all the way through, as I’ll cover the complete Introduction to Arduino MKR WAN 1310 covering pinout, features, pin description, programming, and applications.
Let’s jump right in.
Introduction to Arduino MKR WAN 1310
- The Arduino MKR WAN 1310 includes Lora connectivity that can perform very long-range transmission operations consuming low power.
- A range of technologies available for the communication between IoT devices including WiFi and Bluetooth. But there is one major problem with these technologies – they consume a lot of power.
- This leads to the introduction of Lora technology that not only offers communication between devices using low power but it is also cost-effective and efficient compared to other technologies.
- The MKR WAN 1310 is an improved version of its predecessor, the MKR WAN 1300. It is still incorporated with the Microchip® SAMD21 which is a low-power processor, the MKR family’s characteristic crypto chip (the ECC508), and the Murata CMWX1ZZABZ LoRa® module. This board features a new battery charger, a 2MByte SPI Flash, and the board’s power consumption is incorporated with improved control.
- The operating voltage of the circuit is 3.3V while the voltage through Vin and USB is 5V.
- There are total 8 digital I/O pins incorporated on the board while the number of analog pins is 7. And the pins that can be used for the PWM motor control are 13.
- The board controller comes with a flash memory of 256KB while the SRAM memory is 32KB. There is no EEPROM memory available on the board. The flash memory is mainly reserved to store the Arduino program (sketch). While the SRAM memory is reserved to generate and manipulate variables when it runs.
- Interface this MKR board with Arduino IoT cloud that guarantees safe communication between all connected devices.
- The carrier frequency of this board is 433/868/915 MHz which is termed as the frequency of a carrier wave, calculated in cycles per second, or Hertz, mainly modulated to transmit signals.
Arduino MKR WAN 1310 Pinout
The following figure represents the pinout diagram of Arduino MKR WAN 1310.
Arduino MKR WAN 1310 Pin Description
This is the brief idea of the WAN board. In this section, we’ll cover the pin description of each pin available on the board. Let’s jump right in.
Analog Pins
There are 7 analog pins available on the board. These pins can get any number of values in opposed to Digital pins that get values in two states only i.e. HIGH or LOW
Digital Pins
Total 8 digital pins are installed on the board which you can use either as an input or output based on the requirement. These pins offer only two states HIGH or LOW. When voltage is 5V these pins are in the HIGH state and when the voltage is 0V these pins remain in a LOW state.
PWM Pins
The number of pins that can be used as PWM pins is 13. These pins generate analog results with digital means when PWM pins are activated.
UART Pins
The board contains two pins Rx and Tx for the serial UART communication. The Rx line is used to receive the serial data and the Tx pin is used to transfer the serial data.
SPI Pins
This device also offers an SPI communication protocol that is mainly used to develop communication between the microcontroller and other peripheral devices like shift resistors and sensors.
Two pins: MISO (Master Input Slave Output) and MOSI (Master Output Slave Input) are employed for SPI communication between devices. These pins are used to send or receive data by the controller.
I2C Pins
The WAN board comes with a two-wire communication protocol known as the I2C protocol. This features two pins SDL and SCL. The SDL is a serial data line that carries the data while SCL is a serial clock line that is mainly employed for the synchronization of all data transfer through the I2C bus.
Arduino MKR WAN 1310 Features
Microcontroller = SAMD21 Cortex®-M0+ 32bit low power ARM MCU
Radio module = CMWX1ZZABZ
Supported Batteries = rechargeable Li-Ion, or Li-Po, 1024 mAh minimum capacity
Digital I/O Pins = 8
Circuit Operating Voltage = 3.3V
Board Power Supply (USB/VIN) = 5V
PWM Pins = 13
UART = 1
SPI = 1
I2C = 1
Analog Pins = 7
SRAM = 32KB
CPU Flash Memory = 256 KB (internal)
LED_BUILTIN = 6
EEPROM = no
USB = Full-Speed USB Device and embedded Host
QSPI Flash Memory = 2MByte (external)
DC Current per I/O Pin = 7mA
Carrier frequency = 433/868/915 MHz
Size = 25x67mm
Weight = 32 gr.
External Interrupts = 10 (0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 16 / A1, 17 / A2)
Related Boards
If you’re getting confused about buying the right device for wireless communication, the Arduino MKR series also offers other boards that you can pick for wireless communication.
- MKR NB 1500
- MKR GSM 1400
- MKR WAN 1300
- MKR FOX 1200
Programming
- This board is programmed using Arduino IDE software which is an official software to program all Arduino boards.
- When you open the software, you’ll be offered a basic LED blinking program which you can use to test the board if it’s working fine.
- The WAN board carries a USB port which is used for direct communication with the computer system. You can send a number of instructions to the Arduino board using this USB protocol.
- This device incorporates a built-in Bootloader that is used to burn the program inside the board. This means you don’t need to buy an external burner to program the microcontroller inside the board.
Arduino MKR WAN 1310 Applications
The WAN board is used in a range of applications. And it is the best pick for the development of IoT devices that require low power. The addition of Lora technology makes this device cost-effective and efficient for developing communication between devices compared to devices that only use WiFi or Bluetooth for communication.
That’s all for today. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article. If you have any questions, you can approach me in the section below. I’d love to help you the best way I can. Feel free to share your valuable suggestions and feedback around the content we share, so we keep producing quality content based on your needs and requirements. Thank you for reading the article.