Posted on 07/01/2013 5:55:21 AM PDT by thackney
Canada-based Brightex Lightning has incorporated in the United States and opened an office in Charlotte, North Carolina as it prepares to begin marketing to the U.S.-based oil and gas industry its technology solution to address the threat of lightning strikes.
Brightex's compound plasma lightning rejection (CPLR) system generates a plasma ion cloud that shields and protects assets inside the protected sphere. The system neutralizes and shields a facility from the effect of normal polarization, said Lee Binns, head of international business development for Brightex, in an interview with Rigzone.
The CPLR is used with the fore alarm – which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week every day of the year – is the sentry that handles the task of storm and lightning detection. The fore alarm detects storms by measuring the electric field intensity (EFI) at a distance of 18 miles and will monitor the movement of a storm cloud as long as the cloud or field remains within that specific territory.
"When the EFI is first detected by the fore alarm at a distance of 18 miles, the levels can be very low: 500 to 1,000 volts per meter," Binns commented. "As the storm clouds travel towards the protected area, this value can and will increase proportionately."
When the EFI reaches 20,000 volts per meter within a 1.8 mile boundary, a point at which lightning becomes imminent, the CPLR will be auto-activated.
"These set parameters are variable and can be altered accordingly through software adjustments with respect to fit-for-purpose applications," Binns noted. “This is because the CPLR is managed by a programmable logic controller."
After the EFI falls below 20,000 volts per meter, a timed delay for shutdown of 15 minutes is set in place in the event that the EFI value suddenly begins to rise again within the boundary, Binns said.
The system starts actively protecting a facility when a storm is approximately 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) away, and protects a radius of up to 820 feet (250 meters) on the ground, or 48 acres (20 hectares) that disallows the formation of lightning.
Brightex's system is fully automated and can operate unmanned. The system can also be constructed to any height specific to the asset the CPLR is protecting.
"If you wanted to merely protect your new Rolls Royce, you could mount the CPLR on the roof or hood," said Binns.
The system currently is designed for 120 or 230 voltage operating current operating voltages, but could be configured for any specific application that might arise.
The CPLR can also distinguish and act based on whether greater distance exists between the top of a storm cloud and the ground. In this case, the charge levels of voltages can be considerably higher than those of negatively charged regions.
Since August 2012, Brightex's latest lightning solution has been tested at the Bali, Indonesia airport. During that time, no lightning strikes occurred thanks to the system's protection, Binns noted.
The company's compound plasma lightning technology was acquired in 1995 by Brightex founder Tun Aye Sai, a mining engineer from Myanmar who settled in British Columbia 35 to 40 years ago, from an associate of Sai's, a physicist from China.
Sai incorporated Brightex in 2008, and spent the next few years enhancing the technology through study and positioning the company for future market opportunities, said Binns. During that time, the company obtained its patents in Canada, the United States, China and the European Union and began its global marketing strategy. The technology meets standards laid out by the Canadian Standards Association, UL Standards for Safety, and standards of the European Union and is fully insured worldwide.
Discussion of Lightning Risk to O&G Assets Grows The actual annual economic loss in the United States from lightning strikes remains a controversial topic, with several private and public entities having put out estimates. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's has estimated lightning strikes in the United States to result in $5 billion in economic losses each year, while the National Lightning Safety Institute in 1995 estimated economic losses each year in the United States at $27 million.
A number of factors cause lightning to occur, including evaporation, unstable breezes, moisture from clouds, collision of ice and water particles and polarization in clouds. Lightning can occur within clouds, between clouds and between the cloud and ground.
Typical lightning protection systems use grounding rods or conductors or suppression technology such as arrestors and surge protectors. These systems are passive systems such as dissipation array systems, charge transfer systems and early streamer emission. Brightex's system is an active technology system, Binns noted.
Protecting oil and gas assets from lightning strikes has become a topic of discussion as the oil and gas industry continues to rely more heavily on electronic components to run oil and gas assets and sharpen its focus on managing cost and safety. Rigzone reported in late March on Boulder, Colo.-based Lightning Eliminators, which offers technology that can protect oil and gas assets from lightning strikes.
It's difficult to determine whether the number of lightning strikes around the world have increased, with some measurements indicating an increase while other forms of measurement say nothing, said Dr. Albin J. Gasiewski, director of the Center for Environmental Technology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in an interview with Rigzone. Some measurement systems have indicated that lightning strikes may also be increasing slowly as the climate warms.
With lightning, the issue is more about the damage that lightning strikes can inflict on increasingly complex oil and gas infrastructure, whose operations depend on electronic equipment and is more sensitive to disruption by a huge discharge, Gasiewski commented.
"There are more opportunities for lightning to do damage with larger facilities worldwide that are increasingly sophisticated."
The increasing costs associated with downtime and component replacement at a time when facilities must be run at increasingly higher safety standards in the United States and globally has also brought lightning protection to the forefront of discussion.
More lightning strikes tend to occur along the equatorial belt over South America, Central Africa and Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. These areas are prone to convection and therefore more electrical discharge. Though Indonesia is surrounded by a lot of water, its atmosphere still holds convective activity similar to that seen over land.
Some areas of lightning are not fully understood, such as why the so-called leader in a lightning strike – the portion that comes down from the cloud –connects with objects on the surface. However, there have been incremental improvements in the understanding of the lightning process thanks to better data and new measurement techniques. There is also an improved understanding of the physical process of the electrical breakdown of air occurring today versus a decade ago, Gasiewski noted.
While attempts to prevent clouds from discharging lightning are not practical, there are technological solutions that can mitigate the effects of lightning, including channeling lightning to appropriate places versus allowing it to connect indiscriminately.
Sounds futuristic.
OK so somebody explain this to me. I’ve had several tank battery’s hit over the years, big steel 500 barrel tanks with heater treaters and seperators sticking in the air. Why does it always hit my damn fiberglass water tanks?
Sounds like a great invention. Hope it works.
But Charlotte, NC? Maybe there was another location that was even further away from the oil and petroleum centers.
Or maybe they wanted to be near Bank of America.
First understand how the lightning works. Sorry if you already know this. This is a very short video/flash at the following link that shows how their product works compared to unprotected items like a tree.
http://www.brightexlightning.com/how-it-works/
The lightning is “most likely” to strike a source of ion stream of oppositely charged particles. Those oppositely charged particles are drawn due to the charge intensity of the storm, like opposite poles of a magnet attract, so do oppositely charged particles.
One way to reduce, not eliminate, lightning strikes is to reduce point intensities of charge. We had significant success on the Florida Gas Transmission Pipeline by getting better grounding and getting better connectivity between grounded objects. Every item of height should be well electrically bonded to adjacent items of height.
That said, lightning will do very peculiar things. I used to have a picture of a lightning strike coming down beside, not one, a transmission line tower that was “protected” by upper static lines. The lightning had traveled towards the ground, past the power lines, turned away from the tower, continued turning up, then back towards the tower, completing a 270° turn and struck the phase line in the middle. No way to predict or protect that type of path.
Lightening is gonna do whatever it feels like doing. Mitigation can be done to help “try” to limit strikes and protect your stuff but in the end, it’s nature and you can’t fool mother nature. We had extensive systems in place when I was working at KSC to protect the shuttle and ground systems when on the launch pad. Guess what. It ain’t rocket surgery. LOL! We still got hit from time to time but some of the protection did help save some equipment some of the time. Then again, maybe the lightening was thirsty and that’s why it went after your fiberglass water tanks.
That seems pretty close!
Connect every tank, skid and piece of equipment to ground. A lightning rod protects with high reliability everything within a 45 deg cone with the apex at the tip - Think about rod elevation and multiple rods. Don't presume that the earth ground rod has a functional ground. Dry earth is a lousy conductor. A long enough rod to get down to moist soil is required and I have crossed paths with one power plant in arid country that was getting regular lightning hits until they installed water injection wells to keep their primary grounding location moist and conductive.
Most tank fires are ignited from secondary arcing from a nearby lightning strike. Bonding and grounding with proper maintenance on your thief hatches and Enardos will help.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.