AGR at the BINDT North East Scotland Branch Seminar and Exhibition
19/01/2011
The BINDT North East Scotland Branch Seminar and Exhibition in November started off as an exploration for AGR Technology Design: it was the first time the company attended the event and it ended up with it not only exhibiting but also presenting a paper on subsea ultrasonics using the AGR Neptune and Trident systems.The Neptune system is an ROV-deployed ultrasonic inspection tool that incorporates AGR’s advanced onboard electronics. Neptune provides oil and gas operators a cost-effective way of quantifying the integrity of pipelines at key points along their length, avoiding the costly intervention of saturation dive team and Dive Support Vessel. The modular system can be configured to inspect a range of tubular diameters. Data is transmitted to surface via a fibre-optic or Ethernet connection to match client ROV tooling. The current depth range is 1 km but this can be extended to match the range of the ROV.
Trident is a lightweight manually-deployed scanner that performs a 500 mm-long by 360º circumferential ultrasonic examination of subsea pipeline sections. Data collection and drive control are controlled from the surface using the TD Focus-Scan system.
Considering that the event coincided with the onset of early snowfall and consequent air, road and rail chaos, it was well organised and attendance was encouraging. AGR exhibited together with its sister company AGR Subsea from Aberdeen, who developed the Neptune and Trident robotic systems and market services using these instruments.
