MicroSilicon Crowd Funding Launch Attracts Early Investors

HOUSTON, TEXAS, July 28, '22 — MicroSilicon announced today that its Crowd Funding launch on StartEngine.Com has exceed initial expectations. MicroSilicon is a Houston-based start-up with a global footprint that has been launching a series of digital flow assurance products since 2018. Their Quantum RF Asphaltene Analyzer was nominated for Best Digital Transformation by World Oil in 2018 and the Quantum RF Vision software was nominated for a World Oil New Horizons award in 2021. The overall development of the project has received worldwide recognition including Best Research Awards from ADIPEC and iChemE in 2021. They hold sixteen patents.

MicroSilicon was launched as a spin-off from Rice University in Houston, Texas with the goal of creating an Internet-of-Things platform for digital flow assurance with particular application to asphaltene deposition: the “cholesterol of oil”. Subsequent research by MicroSilicon demonstrated that they could precisely measure the total mass of crude-oil components as they flowed through the system, with excellent match against traditional gravimetric techniques such as SARA. This led to the launch of the Quantum RF product line with subsequent field testing in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, US Land, Canada and Offshore GOM.

The proprietary components of the Quantum-RF monitoring system streamline the detection and quantification of the asphaltene percentage within well fluids, as well as providing ancillary information important to chemical management such as real-time dielectric and conductivity measurement (e.g. for gas/water/oil ratios and for onboard diagnostics). The system dramatically reduces analysis time compared to traditional gravimetric techniques and for the first time makes it feasible to monitor an entire field in real-time. Multiple operators have indicated that they are seeing cost-saving potential.

“The initial launch of our company was based on the traditional ‘Friends-and-Family’ route” said Omar Kulbrandstad and Aydin Babakhani, the co-founders of the company. “We recognized from the early work at Rice that real-time data should allow Operators to better manage their flow assurance programs and ultimately reduce costs of chemical inhibition and intervention. And now that vision is coming alive!”

Other device upgrades were funded by direct industry intervention complemented by an NSF SBIR award, but the co-founders recognized that crowd funding could provide an injection of capital that would accelerate technology roll-out to customers. This led to the launch on StartEngine on July 26th.

By July 27th, over $53K had been raised. “It is gratifying to see such interest in the technology,” said John Lovell, VP of Technology, “We have always been confident of the success and viability of our Quantum RF platform, and StartEngine provides a unique opportunity for smaller investors to come onboard at this early stage of our company's growth!”