【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment】2329–2025: China’s first online monitoring system for water quality in offshore oilfield injection systems was put into operation

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Let’s give praise and support to the achievements made in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment; your participation in discussions is the greatest encouragement. **********************【Ten Years of Progress in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Continuous updates and summaries available – feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** China’s first online monitoring system for water quality used in offshore oil fields has been put into operation. April 25, 2025. On April 24, it was reported by the Engineering Technology Branch of CNOOC Energy Development Co., Ltd. that China’s first intelligent multi-parameter online monitoring system for water quality in offshore oil fields, developed independently by CNOOC, has been successfully installed in an oil field in the western South China Sea. This system increases monitoring efficiency by 11 times, marking a shift from manual monitoring to intelligent monitoring, and it helps ensure the efficient development of offshore oil fields. Oil field water injection is an important technique for increasing production; by reinjecting treated water into the oil field, it is possible to replenish and maintain formation pressure, thereby boosting production capacity. Traditional water quality monitoring for injection relies on manual labor; each sample requires at least 12 analytical tests, and the analysis of a single sample takes over 6 hours. This not only results in a huge amount of work but also leads to issues such as slow response times, numerous errors, and delayed results. The R&D team of CNOOC conducted extensive research on relevant advanced technologies both domestically and internationally. Through multiple rounds of laboratory evaluations and field tests over a period of one and a half years, they succeeded in overcoming five key technical challenges, including the efficient automatic cleaning of oil-containing water samples, the optimization of system flow patterns, and the full-automatic intelligent control of the entire system. As a result, an intelligent online monitoring system for multiple parameters of injection water quality was developed. This system is skid-mounted and modular, with a volume of only 4.4 cubic meters; it can be installed at various points in the water injection treatment process as well as at the heads of water injection wells. It features functions such as automatic monitoring, data processing, graphic display, and over-limit warning, enabling \"one-click operation + real-time data visualization.\" Operators can thus keep an accurate overview of the water quality and adjust the parameters of the water injection treatment process dynamically. After the system was put into use, it fundamentally reduced the production platform’s reliance on manual monitoring, enabling unmanned and intelligent real-time monitoring and control of water quality at offshore platforms. Each platform can reduce the need for manual sampling by 1,400 samples per year, increasing testing efficiency by 11 times, with test accuracy reaching over 95%. Currently, this system has been applied in offshore oil fields and onshore terminals. Once it is adopted across all offshore oil fields, it can save over 100 million yuan annually in costs related to water quality monitoring as well as in repair expenses resulting from substandard water quality.