Photo courtesy Haven Technology Solutions

Photo courtesy Haven Technology Solutions

Photo courtesy Haven Technology Solutions

Magnolia-based research and development company Haven Technology Solutions is gaining attention from big-name oil companies for its patented oil devices that have the potential to streamline the industry across the globe.

David Elms, president of Haven Technology Solutions, said the company was created after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, and he began developing gas-liquid separation technologies with two other partners to help prevent such an incident from happening again. The company uses four patented Flow Regime Management Systems (FRMs) to help separate gas and liquid and prevent the trapping of air on crude oil production pipelines and in the maritime industry.

"God kind of blessed me with this way of seeing," Elms said. "There's a lot of technology that was already out there and a lot had to be married and a lot had to be new and invented. From the very beginning when we got the idea, we developed it and it worked immediately."

The company has found a way to restructure traditional gas-liquid separation devices by making them smaller, more portable and meter real-time data collecting. Elms said the company debuted the new products to the public for the first time May 5–8 at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) held at Houston's Reliant Center.

"There's thousands of companies displaying, and it's cool to have a booth that everyone's lining up for and excited about," Elms said.

Within the next six months, the company plans to ship the gas-liquid separation products out nationally and internationally, Elms said. Haven Technology Solutions manufactures some of the products itself, but is in talks to sublet, license and sell intellectual property rights to other companies to help build the products both inside and outside the U.S. Elms said the products have the potential to alleviate entrained gas in liquids for a variety of other industries such as pharmacy, municipal, medical and food and beverage.

The latest research project in the works is an application that will assist in extracting diesel following drilling projects on work sites, Elms said. It currently costs some oil companies anywhere from $5,000-$8,000 a day to extract diesel, and the new technology could lower costs significantly by making about 80-85 percent reusable again, he said.

Despite attention from big-name oil companies, Elms said he intends for Haven Technology Solutions to remain in Magnolia and retain a small staff to avoid feeling "overwhelmed" when developing new research projects.

"So [the gas-liquid separation is] basically a technology that's advancing with the times," Elms said. "It has the potential to be internationally recognized. In not only being a household name in the oil, gas and marine industry, we're hoping to standardize the marine industry for fueling applications since there's no standardization now."