Asset Integrity - Risk Assessment with Chemical Engineering Principles

Chemical engineering principles are an absolute necessity in the oil and gas industry to be able to assess the asset integrity risk. This risk unmitigated could cause lost production revenue, environmental damage and threaten the people safety. For this reason, it is of extreme importance to examine, comprehend, design, predict, and mitigate these risks. To achieve this, principles of thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, fluid dynamics and transport phenomena are utilized to attain simple and practical solutions to mitigate asset Integrity risk.

Thermodynamic principles are utilized in determining the Phase Behavior of fluids, which will predict the presence of water, a necessary ingredient for acid gas corrosion.. Heat and mass transfer are equally important concepts required to calculate the temperature and pressure profiles across the production system, which will play a role in the severity of asset integrity risk. Moreover, chemical engineers study fluid dynamics to understand the distribution and characteristics of phases present at any given point in the system. These parameters aid in the prediction of asset integrity related issues.

The combination of chemical engineering principles together with mathematics, chemistry, and physics has led to the development of many simulation models. These are constantly utilized upstream to mitigate asset integrity issues, either through the use of chemical or mechanical solutions. Chemical engineers are an essential part of upstream operations, it is the one profession that studies, analyzes, models and solves asset integrity problems to provide more reliable process system, avoid problematic operational conditions and optimize production.