Hydrocarbon Exploration & Production
Survey Design for Sea Bottom Seismic in Shallow Water

Brief

Estimating shear wave properties to improve hydrocarbon exploration

Technology Overview

Underwater seismic acquisition is a standard industry process to collect marine data. The developed method acquires seismic data to estimate reservoir characteristics in a shallow sea water environment. The method involves acquiring seismic data using four component ocean bottom cable using a hydrophone and a three component geophone by varying a time delay between the shots and spacing between the shots. The method leads to the estimation of shear wave properties of a sea bed.


Inventors
  • Karl-Andreas Berteussen
  • Yuefeng Sun
Competitive Advantage
  • Processes multi-component marine seismic data in shallow water environment
  • Provides estimates of the shear wave properties of the seabed and subsurface carbonate reservoirs
  • Improves structural imaging by removing Scholte waves in the imaging process
Market Application
  • Marine seismic data
  • Petroleum (estimating carbonate reservoirs)
  • Geological modeling
Intellectual Property

U.S. 9,250,344

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae

A Method for Removing Scholte Waves and Similar Ground Roll Type Waves from Seismic Sea Bottom Data in Shallow Waters  

Brief

Improves seismic data acquisition and processing

Technology Overview

Underwater seismic acquisition is a standard industry process to collect marine data. The developed method enables the processing of multi-component marine seismic data in order to estimate the properties of the seafloor and sensor calibration filters in a shallow water environment. The method applies a time-frequency-wave number transform on the acquired seismic sea bottom data and applies a time varying frequency-wave number filtering process to accurately process the seismic data.


Inventors
  • Karl-Andreas Berteussen
  • Yuefeng Sun
  • Z Zhang
Competitive Advantage
  • Removes Scholte waves and similar ground roll type waves from a seismic sea bottom data in shallow water
  • Provides reliable surface water analysis
  • Estimates the properties of the seafloor
  • Provides a method to dynamically analyze a surface wave spectrum over a period of time
Market Application
  • Marine seismic data
  • Seismic data acquisition and processing
  • Petroleum – estimating carbonate reservoirs
  • Geological modeling
  • Seafloor evaluations
Intellectual Property

U.S. 8,995,223

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae

Discovering Oil in Complex Geographies: Rise in Core Wettability Characterization Method 

Brief

Improves measurement of wettability across any set of reservoir fluids

Technology Overview

Reservoir wettability is one of the most important parameters that control many aspects of the performance and quantification of hydrocarbon reservoirs. The developed method determines core wettability characteristics of reservoir rock samples based on a modified form of the Washburn equation. The method involves saturating a core sample with a reservoir fluid such as water and imbibing with another fluid such as oil. 


Inventors
  • Shawket Ghedan
  • Celal Canbaz
Competitive Advantage
  • Provides wettability characterization of fluids in a relatively quick, accurate, and faster
  • Enables measurement in terms of contact angle rather than on wettability index
  • Provides results that are easier to analyze and interpret 
Market Application
  • Petroleum exploration
  • Hydrocarbon reservoirs
Intellectual Property

U.S. 8,768,628

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae

Molybdenum Disulfide Foam

Brief

Enhancing the structure of molybdenum disulfide

Technology Overview

Sulfur-containing compounds are by-products from oil and gas production. Molybdenum disulfide is the preferred catalyst for hydro-desulphurization, which is the catalytic chemical process to remove sulfur from natural gas or other refined chemical products. However, molybdenum disulfide is limited to the surface area of the material. The developed process expands the surface area of the material by increasing the porosity and internal cavities of the material.


Inventors
  • Saeed Alkhazraji
  • Salama Almarzouk
Competitive Advantage
  • Enables control of the porosity of foam produced to adapt to various processes and specific requirements
  • Provides a new form of molybdenum sulfide for potential new uses and applications
  • Synthesis method can be applied to other sulfides such as tungsten sulfide, as well boron nitride and graphene
Market Application
  • Petroleum industry
  • Catalysts
  • Coatings / lubricant
Intellectual Property

U.S. 9,963,357

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae

Binder-Free Nano Fiber Catalyst for Petroleum Hydrocracking

Technology Overview

A new binder-free catalyst and a process to produce a designed zeolite-based catalyst with high selectivity. The novel feature of this technology is the use of only catalyst active materials and therefore producing high-quality catalyst through a cost-effective process. 


Inventors
  • Raed Hashaikeh
  • Shaheen Anis
  • Gnanapragasam Singaravel
Competitive Advantage
  • Efficient
  • Fast recovery
  • Scalable
  • Cost-effective
Market Application
  • Catalyst formulation and shaping
  • Petroleum refining
  • Syngas reforming
  • CO2 capture
Intellectual Property

US 2020-0009542 A1

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae 

Smart and Self-Powered Sensors for Geological Hydro-Fracturing

Technology Overview

Smart sensors for in-situ measurement for monitoring and fracture mapping during and after geological hydro-fracturing. The sensors records and provides near to real-time data on temperature, pressue, chemical composition, etc. A record set of these sensors can be embedded in the proppant and provide status of the well. All data and information within the fractured rock and any information changes is transmitted wirelessly.


Inventors
  • Mohamed Sassi
  • Manhal Sirat
  • Irfan Saadat
  • Rashid Abu Al-Rub
Competitive Advantage
  • Self-contained energy sensors
  • Can operate at harsh conditions
  • Long-lasting durability
  • Wireless transmission of information
Market Application
  • Increased production
  • Efficiency on predictive maintenance
  • Saving on operation costs
  • Near to real-time status monitoring
Intellectual Property

US 2019-0273973 A1

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae

Apparatus and Method for Taking Energy-Efficient and Environmentally-Friendly Recovery of Bitumen

Brief

Improving the recovery of bitumen from oil sands

Technology Overview

There are almost 10 trillion barrels of heavy oil and bitumen worldwide, of which 10% is commercially exploitable with existing technology. The developed system and method can lead to the recovery of bitumen from oil sands. The environmentally-friendly system incorporates solar-powered generation of steam to increase the viscosity of bitumen and increase the efficiency of recovery.


Inventors
  • Andy Muto 
  • Anurag Bajpayee
  • Vincent Berube 
  • Matteo Chiesa
  • Daniel Kraemer
Competitive Advantage
  • Provides an energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly recovery of bitumen
  • Eliminates the need of natural gas currently employed for steam production and power generation
  • Provides a novel solution for hydrogen production that does not employ reforming of natural gas
  • Produces low temperature steam by means of solar radiation
Market Application
  • Solar thermal technologies
  • Sustainable technologies
  • Oil recovery from oil sands
  • Bitumen recovery
Intellectual Property

U.S. 8,167,041

Contact

ip@ku.ac.ae