Page 14 - EngineerIt February 2021

AUTOMATION AND CONTROL

Revolutionary new method of inspecting

petrochemical storage tanks

RS Monition and DesignSpark help multi-

disciplinary consortium, Project nautilUS, to
develop sustainable, intrinsically safe robot
for tank inspection

hen filling up at the service station we don't really
consider the journey that fuel has taken as we transfer
Wit from pump to car, much less where it's been stored
prior to us using it. Once raw oil has been extracted, there begins
a multifaceted process of refinement, containment, storage and
transportation, each of these being an industry within an industry.
With oil and fuel storage being an integral commodity within a
global industry, it follows that the infrastructure of storage facilities
worldwide must be adequate and robust. Regular inspection must Electrocomponents, said: “As well as our responsibilities around IP
be made to ensure storage tanks are fit for purpose. The most and commercialisation for nautilUS, we carried out a very extensive
common inspection method often means each storage tank is piece of work, called a Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) model
taken out of service while it's drained and inspected for corrosion; ahead of the project, where we went out to over 100 current users
this is both timely and costly, not to mention hazardous work. and tank farm operators to uncover their list of requirements. We
Project nautilUS is a UK-based consortium championed by needed to know what the must-haves were, and the nice-to-haves.
several leading global companies and institutions, which have This helped to shape the ergonomics, the ease of use, size,
been working together since February 2018 to design and deployment and the ability to deploy with limited people.
develop a multi-million-pound certified, non-destructive testing “We have received a very high level of interest already. There
(NDT) solution. are 600 tank farm operators globally and we’ve already got an
Electrocomponents has developed the Quality Functional active response from around 70 of them, with a number of offers
Deployment (QFD) model via RS Monition, the company’s to utilise the technology in their tanks.
maintenance engineering specialist service, and its DesignSpark “Within the oil and gas industry there is an overarching goal to
engineering platform and community continues to create vital make it unmanned by 2030. Part of the commercialisation that we
opportunities for intellectual property development and have been involved with has been to generate interest in not only
commercialisation of the technology. the overall nautilUS robot, but also the technologies within it. Of
Oil and fuel storage require a robust and reliable infrastructure, course, we have the robot in its entirety, but there are also
with regular inspection critical to ensure that tanks are fit for opportunities to license the individual pieces of technology for
purpose. Existing inspection methods often entail the onerous existing solutions or other applications.”
process described earlier. The DesignSpark engineering platform has been part of the
The nautilUS solution addresses these issues head-on, in the multi-disciplinary team throughout the project and a variety of
form of a small robot which can monitor and plot its own position articles and videos outlining progress are available at:
whilst carrying out corrosion inspection. The robot uses active, real- https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/project-nautilus-member-
time remote controls to move around a tank, and an ultrasound innotecuk To watch the video of the first in-oil tank test, visit:
probe to take measurements of floor thinning. It then records data https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/nautilus-the-answer-to-low-
regarding location for post-processing after the robot is retrieved. cost-oil-tank-inspection n
The design aims to obtain the smallest possible footprint to allow
entry via the smallest manholes of liquid storage tanks. For the DesignSpark is powered by engineers from every corner of the
robot to perform an inspection in an explosive and flammable globe, bringing together engineers from start-up companies with
environment, the robot operation must avoid sparking, which can
limited funds, through to the largest businesses, and students.
create an explosion in the tank due to heat and the presence of
DesignSpark is a platform that provides design solutions
vapour. As well as offering ease of use and unique movement
and supports engineers to accelerate design cycle time, allow
capabilities, the technology can also be applied to the inspection of
rapid prototyping and get changes to market quickly - from
ship-borne fuel tanks, transportation tanks and water storage tanks.
design to manufacturing. n
Michael Burrows, senior innovation advisor at

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