BP said it is now operating the world’s first robotic coreflooding system. The Core Flood Robot is the most recent addition to BP’s program of EOR research facilities.

Coreflooding measures the effectiveness of water or gas injected into an oil-bearing rock sample to displace oil. This can be used to assess the potential for water flooding in an oil field, BP said in a news release.

BP has had a large-scale in-house coreflooding laboratory in the UK for many years, where reservoir samples can be tested at high pressure and temperature ‘reservoir conditions,’ and different reservoir types can be evaluated. The new robotic coreflood system operates for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the release said.

The complete automation and work-flow optimization in the new Core Flood Robot enables hundreds of coreflood tests to be performed each year, rather than dozens as in the past, and enhances BP’s ability to evaluate a continuous stream of new EOR technologies, the company said. This should reduce the time spent developing new technologies by at least 50%.

The Core Flood Robot is operated by the same team that developed LoSal® EOR, BP’s breakthrough reduced salinity waterflooding technology, the company said in the release. More than 45 coreflood tests were performed in validating the LoSal EOR effect, before field trials in Alaska. BP and its partners are now deploying the technology at scale on the Clair Ridge project in the North Sea.