Air Control Entech, a Scotland-based drone service company, used the EXRAY™ professional ROV system to perform a class survey of a ballast water tank on an FPSO quicker, safer, and more efficiently than ever.
PROJECT INFORMATION
Project: Water Ballast Tank Inspection
Type of facility: FPSO
Industry: Offshore Oil & Gas
Safety: Eliminated rope access/scaffold towers and the risk of working at height in confined spaces
Project efficiencies: 2x pax for 2 days vs 6 RAs for 4 days
SCOPE OF WORK
Internal inspection of water ballast tanks to identify defects such as corrosion, and cracks, GVI/CVI. Critical inspection – class required.
SOLUTION
Air Control Entech deployed the EXRAY™ ROV system to perform the full general visual inspection (GVI) and close visual inspection (CVI) of the ballast tank internals. As the inspection was a class requirement, the vessel surveyor was involved in the planning of the scope to ensure all requirements were identified and understood by the team before mobilization.
Once on board, the team collected their permits, set up their equipment, and launched the ROV in the tank. As the EXRAY™ has a long dive time, restrictions around pilot working time were the time limiting factor per dive, requirement to ensure a safe operation.
All data is instantaneously streamed and saved on the pilot and inspector stations, allowing the team to quickly prompt issues to the surveyor remotely whilst enacting the inspection. The ROV can also securely live stream over the asset's Wi-Fi however this was not required during the trip.
The report was produced using the NAVIA™ data management system shortly after the dive. All reporting was submitted to the class survey or following demobilization and handed to the client once approved and signed.
BENEFITS
Cost Reduction
Using EXRAY™ instead of a rope-access team with scaffold towers reduces the overall cost by nearly 10x: fewer people means lower bed allocation and minimal tank preparation time. The proprietary NAVIA™ automatic data management system eliminates the need to spend hours following the inspection to sort out the media and prepare a manual report.
Improved Data Quality
Environmental Impact
Safety
RESULTS
Detailed Full HD video footage and 4K images with a seamless visual capture technology
Automatic data management and reporting – cutting manual hours to collate media in a manual report
Minimal preparation time required - no dewatering, degassing, or scaffolding
Minimal bed usage – 1 pilot + 1 inspector instead of 5-6 strong rope access team – over 2 days instead of 4 days
Low risk
Founded in 2014, Hydromea is a Swiss-based technology company delivering solutions that allow customers to have near real-time high-speed and high-volume data access in the subsea environment. Hydromea’s unique expertise lies in three complimentary underwater technology areas: wireless communication networking, robotics and navigation.
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