Total

Hazardous and Integrated Solutions Co.,Ltd

Decontamination of Mercury
from Sub-sea Pipelines
Total Hazardous and Integrated Solutions (THIS) has been developing
technologies to face many of the decontamination challenges posed
by upcoming decommissioning of oil and gas facilities in SE Asia.
Removal of mercury from subsea pipelines has been a key area of
research in 2014/15 with large-scale trials planned in 2016.

Mercury as a contaminant in pipelines may appear in many forms

including elemental mercury, mercury in sludge, mercury as complex
compounds and
mercury entrained in
Hg the surface matrix of
enriched scale and steel. THIS
region has developed a system
that considers mercury
in all potential phases
and gives the client a
bespoke
decontamination
solution per pipeline.

The solution relies on a series pig trains containing bespoke brushes

and complex chemical formulas designed to target the mercury in
each phase individually and entrain it within the chemical for later
extraction. Each phase may consist of multiple pigging runs with the
first phase tackling hydrocarbon deposits, then calcium and iron
scales and finally adsorbed mercury in the steel matrix. After each
run chemical analysis will determine whether to move to the next
phase of decontamination.

Waste from the pigging runs can either be re-injected or sent to THIS facilities for processing and
disposal. By using chemical additives and mechanical processing the contaminants, including mercury
can be removed from waste where possible so as the majority of the waste can be stabilised and
disposed of as non-hazardous material.

This technology has been trialled with a major operator and has been successful at removing mercury
down to <20ppm from contaminated pipeline sections in both lab scale (1 samples) and bench scale
(1m x 14 samples) testing. The process is due to be tested in a large scale in Q3 2016 before being
trialled in the field.

+66 (0) 33673435 THIS@isthesolution.com