Three-dimensional seismic technology helped unlock more subsurface secrets for oil and gas operators. Now, 3D technology can be used in scanning, a cutting-edge technology that engineers can use to plan upgrades to oil and gas assets virtually.
“3D Reality Capture is honestly suited for all types of oil and gas assets,” said Mark Franklin, account manager and design and reality capture lead at Kleinfelder. Kleinfelder is an engineering, construction management, design, and environmental professional services company.
Franklin, an authority on 3D scanning who uses a number of different technologies for modeling, said his company typically uses the scanners on tripods but that the scanners also can be attached to drones or robotic devices to scan areas difficult to access.
“Typically, a person will set up the scanner in many different locations to capture all areas and angles of what we want information on, and then we stitch and register all those scanned locations together to create one large virtual model,” he said. “Depending on the desired quality and detail of the scan, each scan takes anywhere from 3 to 8 minutes to complete, and we can complete 100% of scans within a day using multiple cameras at the same time to capture large swaths of areas.”
Using a computer or connected device, engineers can then see through walls or underground to perfectly chart pipe systems and other elements of infrastructure that typically are hidden.
“Since you can overlay scans on top of each other, we can timestamp scans so that if we scan at one point in time when something is exposed—underground piping or open walls—and then scan after it has been covered, you would be able to virtually go through the wells or underground and see those assets.”
Such 3D cameras are relatively available but industrial-grade units are still quite expensive, he said. The cameras his company use cost upward of $125,000 with all the equipment and software required.
“The cameras we use are accurate to more or less 1 mm at a 350-m distance away from an object, so we can capture a high level of detail from far away,” he said.
Franklin said that, when his company began using the tool, they started using it on facilities with aging infrastructure where existing drawings and information were hard to find.
“Teaching our own engineers and designers how to complete the reality capture allowed us to be fit for purpose and only capture what was required for the work we were completing,” he said. “Within in a matter of hours, we could capture highly accurate and detailed information that would be utilized to assist with our designs.Therefore, a lot of the areas we initially captured were small portions of facilities.”
When clients saw how quickly areas could be captured by the scans, “it quickly started to grow to where we often are asked to scan entire facilities to create full virtual reality models. We have scanned some of the largest oil facilities in the world over the last few years, as well as many smaller facilities for a lot of midstream clients where access to certain sites is difficult, and, therefore, having a virtual model they can access becomes valuable and a big cost savings,” he said.
Once a 3D model has been completed, Franklin said those models can be shared online via the cloud on its Webshare service.
“This gives the clients and owners the ability to log in and fly through the full models of their facilities,” he said. “With these models, we can add tagging and links to any data that the client may have. Therefore, with a piece of equipment, for example, we can tag that equipment and add links to where all the information for that piece of equipment is located. That could be the drawings, maintenance schedules, and any other information they may have. It also includes linking to the operations panel that would show live information on what is currently happening with that equipment. There is no limit to what you can link into the model, and, therefore, you can start to build this virtual model to link it with any live or nonlive piece of information.”