Oiling the pipes
Spending the school holidays in Texas, Hobart and Colorado isn’t the typical pastime for a girls’ high school science teacher. But Peter Wilson, head of science at Otago Girls High School, is no ordinary teacher
Monday, November 22 2004 || BY Bette Flagler
Wilson, who has a PhD in thin film optics from Otago University, spends his free time helping Texas oil giant ChevronTexaco solve a very sticky problem. It seems that when oil is pulled from the ground, it sometimes solidifies and blocks the pipes it’s meant to flow through. It’s a problem particularly in the ultra-deep
water reserves of the Gulf of Mexico, where the pressure and temperature of the water affects the oil’s chemical behaviour.
The US Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service calls the Gulf of Mexico an “expanding frontier”. In the last three years, oil has been discovered in at least eleven ultra-deep (more than 2100 metres) locations in the Gulf.
All that oil translates into an opportunity for Wilson’s company, Otago Osmometers (he’s the only employee, but works closely with Tony Haymet, chief of Marine Research at Australian research organisation CSIRO). Otago Osmometers makes a product called the ALTA — or Automatic Lag Time Apparatus — that measures how far a solution (in this case oil) can be “supercooled” and still remain a liquid. Chemists can then intervene with antifreeze compounds, and more ALTA testing, to keep it at the right viscosity.
A prototype designed for the high-pressure conditions of the Gulf is ready to be tested at the Colorado School of Mines, at an estimated cost of nearly $500,000.
While Wilson funds much of his work himself, the first round of research into the development of an ALTA for oil processes was helped by a $100,000 grant from
ChevronTexaco. BP has since heard about Wilson and Haymet and, because it faces the same plugging problems with oil in the Gulf as CheveronTexaco, it’s currently negotiating to jump on board for the next round of R&D.
If the testing proves successful, the technology will be ready to be put to use — and chances are Wilson won’t be spending his days calling the roll in a high school science class.