Digitisation of Marine Break Away Couplings with a View to Improve Marine Hose Operations

Abstract For offshore import and export of crude oil and other products systems such as SPM (Single Point Mooring), Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO), Multi Buoy Mooring (MBM), etc. may be used. The main equipment that make up these systems can be summarized as the structure e.g. Calm Buoy, floating and submarine hoses. A typical SPM system is illustrated in Fig. 1 and the equipment used in these may be classed as critical enabling continuous and reliable operation of the system. However, these are at risk of damage and failure due to a range of factors such as tanker breakout, surge pressures, extreme environmental conditions, etc. Failure of any of these critical equipment can have catastrophic consequences such as environmental damage, system downtime, etc. To protect the entire system from damage Marine Break Away Couplings (MBC) are used and typically installed among the floating and submarine marine hoses. The location where an MBC is installed in a SPM system is highlighted in Fig. 1. An MBC is designed to activate at a pre-defined axial and pressure load protecting the system. Further, the MBC automatically energizes internal valves preventing the product from being released into the environment. In the main, the design of an MBC has remained unchanged for over 30 years. In this period, although the industry has benefited from the safety protection offered by an MBC, on occasions the industry has experienced short falls in the operation of an MBC. For example, in case of an activation at night, it has not been possible to detect the activation, conduct an effective root cause analysis to determine the exact reasons for an activation, a partial separation of the two halves of the MBC has gone unnoticed, etc.