Quantum leap

With depleting reserves and fluctuating oil prices, companies are beginning to seek new technologies to increase productivity. Oil and Gas Middle East's Matt Scotland looks at three exciting new developments in the industry.

Iremember thinking many years ago after watching another re-run of that camp Steven Spielberg 80s classic, Inner Space - where piloted vessels are reduced to the size of a grain of sand and injected into humans - just how preposterous the idea of this concept was. Let me just testify: I was no budding Einstein, but tiny molecule sized ships travelling in someone's bloodstream whilst repairing injuries? The chance of a US$150 barrel of oil seemed more likely...

Move forward twenty years, and although shrinking a man into the size of a dust particle may be the stuff of science fiction, the manipulation of substances at a molecular level has opened the way for a raft of exciting possibilities once deemed impossible.

Interestingly enough, the concept of nanotechnology, or nanotech, has been around for longer than any Steven Spielberg film. Its history goes back as far as 1959 when talks given by US physicist Richard Feynman discussed the possibility of manipulating atoms and molecules for human gains.

The term was not coined until 1974 by a Tokyo Science University Professor, Norio Taniguchi, and the technology was finally applied by the early 1980s when scientific advancements led to the discovery of two nanostructures: fullerenes (endearingly named buckyballs) and carbon nanotubes.

Nanotechnology essentially refers to controlling matter at anything smaller than 100 nanometres - one nanometre being one millionth of a millimetre. It is an extremely diverse field of science, covering anything from the creation of advanced materials using nanoparticles to the possibility of engineering nano-sized robots.

"There is a tremendous amount of interest in nanotechnology in the oil and gas industry at present - Saudi Aramco held a symposium only recently on the topic. The thing to realise is it is not a unified science in the way that semi-conductor science is, it is more of a tool kit which can be applied at almost any stage of the manufacturing process - the core principle being that materials behave very differently at the very small scale," says Matthew Nordan, president, Lux Research.

Lux Research describes itself as a strategic advice and on-going intelligence on emerging technologies provider. It offers its services to leaders in business, finance and government across the world looking to exploit science-driven innovation for competitive advantage.

Nordan, a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University who has counselled decision makers on technology for over a decade, goes on to explain how Lux Research can help businesses grow with the help of advanced technologies.

"Our clients have the same problem, whether they are big corporations, investment management firms or anyone else: that there is a tremendous amount of innovation out there and a large number of university and government labs coming out with new and interesting things in the physical sciences," says Nordan.

"So we go out on behalf of these companies, with teams of 200-250 innovators specialising in a specific area, and we do interviews and site visits of each of these a couple of times a year and then we write them up for our clients. You can think of us as a outsource technology scouting team that our clients use to keep a pulse on innovation."

The key principle behind nanotechnology is the change in behaviour of particles at a nanoscopic scale. It appears that as you get down to an ever increasingly smaller scale and closer to the cryptic and confusing world of quantum mechanics, behaviour of molecules and atoms behave very differently and therefore can be manipulated and altered for technological means.

"A classic example is the aluminium can. At a normal scale it is completely inert: you can crush it, kick it, burn it and nothing will happen. However, if you were you to get down to 50-60 nanometre size you reach a tipping point where the properties of the particle change rapidly, and the aluminium would spontaneously combust with oxygen," explains Nordan.

"This could then be used for explosives or for shaped charge detonators, which is a possible area of interest to the oil and gas industry: the use of nanostructured explosives that have directed energy in a specific direction."

One of the key nanoparticles developed are carbon nanotubes. These very long cylindrical carbon molecules are incredibly strong, have unique electrical properties and are efficient conductors of heat compared with ordinary carbon particles, found say in graphite.

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