Welcome to Flow Assurance and Scale Team (FAST).

The Flow Assurance and Scale Team (FAST) is a group of over 20 academic, research, and support staff and research students, based at Heriot-Watt University and the University of Leeds.

We deliver research and consultancy, focusing on the management of oilfield scale. However, we also work on many other topics where brine-rock geochemical interactions are important.

Current sponsors of the FAST8 Joint Industry Project are below.

Post Graduate Research

Postgraduate research opportunities that culminate in 1 year MSc, 2 years MPhil or 3 years PhD qualifications.

Research to address field applied problems

Consultancy

FASTrac is a series of bespoke one-to-one research projects, training, consultancy and equipment manufacture, where arising IP rights are assigned to the funder and results may be treated as commercial in confidence. Building on over 30 years of experience in the area of Scale Management, Core Flooding, and Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery, the activity provides tailored research and consultancy projects to Oil Operators, Service Companies and Chemical Manufacturers to solve field related challenges.

FASTrac’s proven track record to deliver high quality results and interpretation has gained us international recognition and a satisfied client base.  FASTrac provided one of the industry impact statements for the Heriot-Watt University submission to the UK wide Research Evaluation Framework (REF).  FAST and FASTrac also contributed to Heriot-Watt University successful submission to the Queen’s Anniversary Award for 2015.

FASTrac projects include:

  • Scale Health Checks
  • Scale Inhibitor Evaluation – Performance (Sulphate, Carbonate and Sulphide Scales)
  • Scale Inhibitor Evaluation – Retention
  • Scale Management – Best in Class Studies
  • Detailed Core Flooding to evaluate oil/water/chemical interactions within Porous Media
  • Polymer Flooding
  • Reservoir Geochemistry
  • Field Modelling of Scale Inhibitor Squeeze Treatments
  • Reservoir Simulation
  • Equipment Manufacture
  • Training