The Cokebusters’ service provision is unique. Their leading technologies, which are deployed worldwide, are all developed in house.​
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The foundations of the company are rooted in the ‘decoking’ of refinery fired heaters. This technique is critical in ensuring operational readiness and optimal thermal efficiency of the refining process. The consequences of coke contamination mean not only a deterioration in product production rates, but also increased consumption of fossil fuels and increased risk of pipeline rupture.​
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In 2013 Cokebusters announced a totally new service offer as a complement to their trademark decoking. The company had imagined, designed, built and successfully patented a ‘single bodied intelligent pig’. This was a revolutionary and meant that in a single combined operation Cokebusters could not only decoke process piping, but now scientifically verify its cleanliness and examine the pipe surfaces for any signs of corrosion. The single bodied tool was a world first with superior navigation around the geometries of complex process systems.​
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In the last 10 years Cokebusters has cleaned and intelligently inspected some 1,000 fired heaters across South America, USA, UK, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and into Asia, with the evolving intelligent pig capturing up to 30,000 measurements per second. The digital data is interpolated and converted into a navigable high resolution 3D ‘heat map’.​
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With the increasing decarbonisation trajectory, in 2022 Cokebusters was challenged to design and build a miniaturised tool to inspect a solar steam plant in the Oman desert. This 100km tubing array was deemed ‘uninspectable’ due to its ultra small diameter. Some 12 months later the team delivered the solution on site. The ability to package a mobile digital inspection technology into a device with a diameter of only 1.5” was extraordinary and the world’s smallest intelligent pig was heralded, contributing to the Energy Industries Council Award for Innovation, Company of the Year and most recently the King’s Award for Innovation.​
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In 2023 and with support from a Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP) with the University of Strathclyde, Cokebusters started developing their 5th generation digital inspection technology. The basic design principle remains rooted on the 2013 ideal but makes use of the rapid advances in ultrasonic arrays, modern circuitry and latest software architecture. Practically the tooling will offer another step change in the amount and quality of data that can be collected. This will permit the operator to ‘see’ much smaller defects with a far higher degree of confidence. The logarithmic change in the volumes and competency of data is steering the company towards an advancement in data science and machine learning for which a further KTP has established.​
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The Cokebusters’ intelligent pigs are increasingly being deployed to inspect the uninspectable and across a far broader energy spectrum, including renewables. Competent inspection knowledge allows the owner/operator to make informed judgement which will reduce the instances of uncontrolled environmental release, ensure mechanical integrity and ultimately assure the portfolio for longer. This assurance process not only serves to manage risk and reduce operational expenditure, but also to assist portfolio longevity.