This proposal seeks funding for a three year research programme into the use of waves which are guided by structural features for the detection of defects, such as cracks or corrosion, in or near the features. The idea is supported by practical observations that a butt weld between two plates has a significant guiding effect, clearly tending to retain the energy of the fundamental extensional wave in and near the weld. The work will include the development of a modelling capability to study and understand the nature of guided waves in welds and other structural features, followed by a study of the application of the model to butt welds and other realistic features of interest to the industrial partners. The proposal is being submitted within the UK Research Centre in NDE (RCNDE) to the targeted research programme, the funding for which is earmarked by EPSRC for industrially driven research.

One of the main challenges our society faces is the dwindling level of oil reserves which we not only depend upon for transport fuels, but also plastics, lubricants and a wide range of petrochemicals. This application seeks to provide an answer through synthetic biology: making organisms produce "oil". Although the production of oil is mainly a biogenic process, the geochemical conversion of biological matter to oil occurs over thousands of years. Solutions that seek to reduce our dependency on fossil oil are therefore urgently needed. The direct production of hydrocarbon compounds by living organisms, bypassing the geochemical conversion of organic matter into oil, is an attractive process, but is unfortunately not part of the "mainstream" repertoire of biochemical reactions that would be required to make this an attractive sustainable alternative. Indeed, minor pathways or side-reactions resulting in the production of hydrocarbons such as alkenes or alkanes have only recently been documented. Unfortunately, these are not present in any organism to the scale and/or specificity that would support industrial application, let alone provide a valid alternative to fossil oil. However, the application of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering to modify these pathways is likely to result in innovative advances in this area. To meet these challenges, we will combine state-of-the-art enzymology and laboratory evolution techniques with synthetic biology. The first challenge is enzymatic hydrocarbon production, a process that often starts with fatty acids. The enzymes involved in converting fatty acids to hydrocarbons have only very recently been identified and many remain unstudied. Furthermore, their properties (substrate and product specificity, stability and rate) are unlikely to support an industrial scale process. We will investigate the use of a wide range of enzymes using structure-based rational engineering and laboratory evolution, in order to create a comprehensive toolkit of catalysts that we will exploit for hydrocarbon production. Ultimately, we will attempt to integrate these with various components into a bacterial strain which can convert renewables into hydrocarbons, preferentially excreted to the outside environment, creating a sustainable process. This ambitious programme addresses an urgent industrial need for reducing our dependency on fossil oil. Through enzyme design and development of new pathways, it will generate "oil"-producing organisms, hence bypassing the need to drastically adapt oil-dependent processes while reducing the associated carbon footprint. Our project will focuses in particular on production of linear alpha-olefins, a high value, industrially crucial intermediate class of hydrocarbons that are key chemical intermediates in a variety of applications, such as flexible packaging, rigid packaging and pipes, synthetic lubricants used in passenger car, heavy duty motor and gear oils, surfactants, detergents, lubricant additives and paper sizing. At present, no "green" alpha-olefin production process is available, a situation which this application seeks to change.

Two basic approaches have been adopted by industry to establish a reliable Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) procedure that is fit for purpose. 1. In aerospace and offshore, where many similar defects are found repeatedly through many inspections, the Probability of Detection approach can be used. This approach is based on well-founded receiver operating characteristics theory. 2. Where only a few defects are expected and each may be unique, as in the nuclear industry, then Technical Justification is used. This is a judicious mixture of trials, modelling and physically-based reasoning. The technical justification neither quantifies the likelihood of errors nor gives any guidance on the effectiveness of the inspection should any of these errors occurs. Our proposal will provide a methodology for identifying errors and for quantifying their effect on inspection reliability. A combination of Fault and Event Trees will be used to identify and quantify errors in the entire process. This will enable studies of how best to improve the reliability of any NDT technique within any NDE approach and therefore complements both the Probability of Detection and Technical Justification approaches. The novel aspects of this proposal are: 1. The cause-consequence approach carried through an entire NDT/NDE situation; 2. Making the maximum use of available data, in part through the use of Bayesian networks to establish the causal correctness of the Fault and Event trees without needing to acquire new data through either experiment or modelling; 3. Ensuring that the results are not biased by unwarranted tails in probability distributions of influencing factors; and 4. Development of a framework for any inspection task which is generic but can readily be customised for each specific application.Data libraries will form an important part of the output. A key measure of success will be the degree to which industry can use the tool created to identify cost-effective ways of improving the reliability of their NDT/NDE.

The complex and multi-scale nature of thin-films poses significant modelling challenges for many systems which occur in nature or industrial contexts ranging from foams, to engine lubricants in electric vehicles, from biomembranes to non-alcoholic beverages, from contact lenses to industrial coatings. The applications of the thin liquid films where the interface is contaminated either accidentally or on purpose, are endless. This naturally leads to considerable research and economic opportunities associated with the ability to understand and control the effect of additives and contaminants on the thin-film interface. The main difficulty here, after many years of intense research, remains with the fact that the role of a contaminant on the interface is generally not well understood. We are starting to understand the effect of surfactants, which is a subset of contaminants with surface-active agents, such as washing up liquid and detergents, but a generalised theory of contaminants remains elusive. This is due to not only the limited models of surface-altering agents upto dilute concentrations, which is not always the case in nature, but also the lack of an unifying framework upon which to study contaminants that are not surfactants. This project will provide such an unifying mathematical framework to study a generalised contaminant on a thin liquid film. By describing the inputs of the generalised contaminant into the system as contributing to an effective gradient in the surface tension, induced by whichever special property the contaminant possesses, our approach introduces new mechanisms into the continuum dynamics and allows comparisons to be made with experimental studies which often combines multiple effects of the contaminant. Disentangling the various nonlinear effects in the contaminant is a difficult problem which cannot be overlooked. The mathematical framework is a vital first step towards a complete categorisation of all the component in the multiphysics soup of a generalised contaminant solution. This categorisation not only allows us to tackle vastly more complex contaminants than previous possible, but also enables us to engineer thin liquid interfaces to an exacting specification or stability for a particular application, such as a non-alcoholic beer with the same foaming characteristics as an alcoholic version or a non-foaming engine lubricant for high-efficiency electric vehicles, both of which are examples of thin liquid interfaces which would benefit from a complete understanding of the role contaminants play on the surface.

Background As part of the exploitation of UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) oil and gas (O&G), more than 27,000 km of pipelines have been installed since the 1960s. To date, only 2% have been decommissioned and there has been little research on the consequences of decommissioning to other industries and the environment [1]. Over the next 6-8 years, approximately 5,600 km of pipelines will require decommissioning on the UKCS [2]. Pipeline decommissioning is considered on a case-by-case basis, by the comparative assessment of the available decommissioning options [3]. As part of the comparative assessment, operators must demonstrate to the regulator (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy - BEIS) that any proposed strategy meets international obligations to ensure the safety of fishing and protection of the marine environment. In order to do so, a comprehensive evidence-base and a strategic framework for assessing pipeline decommissioning with respect to fishing and environmental interests is required. The commercial fishing industry is one of largest users of the UK continental shelf (UKCS), and it is known that there is substantial spatial overlap between pipeline infrastructure and fishing [4]. The presence of decommissioned pipelines on the seabed, without rock dump, presents a potential snagging risk to fishers, according to the type of pipeline, seabed type, fishing intensity and gear-type. The UKCS also contains a number of internationally important conservation features (habitats and species), such as those listed in the EU Habitats Directive (e.g. cold-water corals) and those that are included within designated marine protected areas. These conservation features/species (CF/S) are potentially sensitive to pipeline decommissioning as a result of physical impacts, sediment disturbances and the removal of hard substratum which provides additional habitat for the CF/S and/or protection from trawling damage. Objective This project will result in the quantification of the risks/benefits of all pipeline decommissioning options to both fishing and the environment and the integration of these risks to find the optimal decommissioning solution for each pipe (from the fisher/environmental perspective). This will be achieved by: 1. Combining and collating knowledge of species-pipeline associations gained from analysis of video footage of pipelines (collected routinely by the industry for integrity monitoring), spatial data on fishing patterns and snagging incidents, and data on the distribution and sensitivities of CF/S. 2. Developing spatial 'risk-layers' that can be flexibly combined to evaluate and minimise the relative risks to conservation interests and fishers, across all UKCS pipelines, from all feasible decommissioning options. 3. Embedding the resulting assessment into decommissioning protocols. Impacts and beneficiaries The main beneficiaries of the project will be the UK Government, their advisors [5], fishers and the oil and gas industry who will benefit from an enhanced evidence-base that is shared across all sectors. The outputs of the project will facilitate cost-effective, rapid, consistent and transparent decision-making in relation to pipeline decommissioning. REFERENCES [1] Oil and Gas UK (2013), Decommissioning of pipelines in the North Sea region [2] Oil and Gas UK (2014), Decommissioning Insight 2014 [3] Department for Energy and Climate Change (2011), Decommissioning of Offshore Oil and Gas Installations and Pipelines under the Petroleum Act [4] PipeFish - Optimising the decommissioning of oil and gas pipelines with respect to commercial fishing at the scale of the UK continental shelf. NE/N019369/1 [5] Marine Scotland and statutory nature conservation bodies such as Scottish Natural Heritage and Natural England