Mercury Cleaning

We are looking for  technologies and solutions to detect and clean mercury from steel surfaces of pipelines and processing equipment (tanks, separators, heat exchangers, …). The majority of gas condensate fields globally carry traces of Mercury in their composition. After decades of operation the Mercury has been demonstrated to collect at the inner walls of pipelines and processing equipment, among others as a type of Mercury Scale. We have pipelines where we know Mercury is flowing in but it is not observed/measured at the pipeline outlet. As a result we are faced with the following two key challenges. First are the plants at the receiving end of the pipelines where we have examples of processing equipment built using materials incompatible with Mercury. It is critical to know how far the Mercury front has progressed through the pipeline and what the risk is it will make it all the way to the outlet. Secondly are the assets going through Decommissioning & Restoration activities involving pipelines and processing equipment. Steel can be recycled by selling it as scrap metal to smelters. However, they will only accept scrap metal with Mercury levels in the 1 ppm range. If too high the metal will not be accepted and will thus be required to be disposed off as chemical waste at a significant cost. Cleaning it to the 1 ppm range converts cost into revenue by potential re-use/re-purpose of equipment and selling it as scrap metal to smelters if re-use/re-purpose is not possible. In addition it could potentially enable a Leave-in-Place strategy for subsea pipelines leading to a significant reduction in D&R costs.

Problem Statement

Mercury deposition in pipelines and processing equipment preventing re-use/re-purpose and recycling by selling scrap metal to smelters. Note this is a challenge for all operators, particularly in Australia where a Leave-in-Place D&R strategy for subsea pipelines will require clear demonstration of appropriate cleanliness of the pipelines.

Type of Assets

Gas/condensate fields, LNG Plants, Floating LNG Plants, Assets handling unprocessed gas/condensate fluids