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Zacc Dukowitz, Flyability, USA, details how drones are helping to improve safety at oil refineries.
rone technology has rapidly improved over the last few years, and with these improvements have come its rapid adoption in the oil and gas industry. Inspections present one of the most common uses for drones in oil and gas. During planned outages, inspectors use high-quality inspection drones to collect visual data remotely, allowing for data to be collected more quickly and more safely than would be possible using a manual approach. The use of drones as a remote visual inspection (RVI) tool does not present any sacrifice in data quality. In fact, in many cases the drone’s visual data will be of the same – or better – quality than the data an inspector could collect in person. The data will also typically be more comprehensive, since drones can capture video during an entire flight, from which still images can be extracted for further analysis.
How drones improve plant safety during inspections The five controls that guide safety considerations for industrial work are as follows (in order from most to least effective):1 n Elimination: physically removing a hazard. n Substitution: replacing a hazard with a lower-risk alternative. n Engineering controls: separating workers from a hazard. n Administrative controls: changing the way people work. n Personal protective equipment: providing protective equipment such as helmets, boots or gloves. For most visual inspections at oil refineries, drones can allow maintenance managers to implement the highest HYDROCARBON 31
ENGINEERING
June 2022
