What started out as an attempt to come up with a low-cost smokeless flare design for use in the Rub Al-Khali has become a technological breakthrough that is garnering awards at home and abroad, and drawing international attention as major oil companies consider it for their own operations.

Saudi Aramco’s Mazen M Mashour recently won a Gold Award and second place overall from a field of 1,000 inventions at Geneva’s 34th Interna-tional Inventors’ Confe-rence.
He also won the award of Excellent Achievement from the Malaysian Association of Research Scientists. His unique smokeless flare is being commercialised by Saudi Aramco’s New Business Development.
Earlier this year, Mashour’s invention achieved national recognition when it was awarded a Gold Medal by Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdul-Aziz, Governor of Qasim, at the Saudi Inventors Convention organized by King Abdul-Aziz Foundation for the Gifted in Buraidah.
That medal qualified Mashour to travel to Geneva, where he represented the Kingdom among the world’s best inventors.
The reason Mashour’s patented process is gaining so much attention is that it solves an environmental problem efficiently and at low cost.
After oil or gases are brought up from underground fields, they are processed in plants where they are purified and made ready for local consumption or export. Flaring is part of the process that eliminates impurities through combustion. But flaring, unfortunately, also releases smoke and solid particles into the atmosphere.
Using an idea similar to the afterburner of a jet engine, Mashour’s device creates a high-pressure air stream to increase the flare’s temperature to a level that the impurities are burned off rather than discharged into the atmosphere.
What’s more, as opposed to earlier smokeless flares that combined high pressure air and steam, Mashour has found a method to achieve the same results at far lower capital and operational costs.
Saudi Aramco is successfully using this technology at Uthmaniyah, Shedgum, Ain Dar and other facilities around the Kingdom with plans to further expand its use.
Mashour keeps exploring more ways to make the smokeless flare even more efficient and economical.
Mashour gave credit to several people who have helped and encouraged him along the way, especially New Business Development, Northern and Southern Area Oil and Gas Operations, and Engineering Services.
“I couldn’t have done it without them,” he said.