SUEZ breaks ground on new laboratory focused on oil and gas industry innovation

SUEZ Water Technologies & Solutions broke ground on a new laboratory in Tomball, Texas, north of Houston, which is expected to open mid-2018.

In addition to continuing the research and development of specialty chemicals for the industrial segment, the new facility will expand to include further process innovation in the oil and gas industry, focusing on global upstream and downstream applications.

“The new SUEZ technology facility in Texas was developed with an emphasis on increased safety and environmental design concepts to deliver state-of-the-art laboratory infrastructure and training facilities for our engineers and scientists who are developing and supporting new chemical and monitoring technologies,” said Amy Ericson, global business leader for chemicals and monitoring solutions, SUEZ–Water Technologies & Solutions. “This R&D facility also will increase our digital capabilities while allowing us to provide greater support for our diverse industrial customer base.”

The new laboratory also will provide industrial water, oil, microbiological, deposit and metallurgical failure testing to support SUEZ’s customers. In addition, the site will have a technical training centre for engineers and scientists – both internal and customer-oriented.

The facility design is modular – allowing for lab adaptation to changing priorities and customer-specific projects. Currently designed for more than 80 researchers and support staff, additional support facilities have been engineered in place at the design phase, allowing for future expansion.

For the oil and gas industry, customised experimental simulation capabilities that closely mimic the field environment are being added and upgraded. New research and application development efforts will continue in process and water chemistry for oil and gas production, transport, refining and petrochemicals, emphasising all unit operation support, failure and root-cause analyses. It also will allow for expert services and application technology as well as a new emphasis on sensors, monitoring solutions, and digital domain to further advance our process-focused solutions.

“Our customer service analytical laboratories have additional capabilities to enhance our current water, oil, microbiological and solids and materials testing for our large customer base,” Ms Ericson added. “Investments in new analytical instrumentation will provide improvements in deposit, water, oil and materials testing while incorporating advanced digitization to manage our data output while interfacing with our InSight* and iService platforms that provide comprehensive automated field performance reports – including alarms – and advanced predictive analytics.”