Disruptive digital asset management tool for critical oil and energy installations
To overcome traditional inspection methods, structural integrity monitoring can provide far greater knowledge on process integrity, significantly increase safety and reduce considerable maintenance cost through the early detection of failures. Adding risk assessment methods will greatly improve risk management during an asset’s lifetime, boosting resilience, life span and environmental impact of critical assets. The EU-funded NANO project delivered three major products: a modular industrial digital platform (UNO), a real-time remote magnetooptical sensor (MOT) and a hybrid acquisition box (FUSION). MOT is a patent-pending sensor that combines magnetostrictive-generated ultrasonic-guided waves with fibre Bragg grating. FUSION receives data from photonics, optical fibres, ultrasonic, acoustic and electrical sensors. The combination of both tools allows companies to perform degradation screening, condition assessment and monitoring in large pipelines, process equipment and industrial plant structures. Integrated into UNO, the existing data will produce real-time and predictive insights, providing agile asset management during the industrial process. By combining sensing data with predictive algorithms, “UNO will help equipment-intensive companies excel in Industry 4.0 by providing them with a holistic vision of all their assets’ performance,” says Viviana Correia Pinto, Innovation Manager at project coordinator EQS Global. “They will control, assess and predict production while overseeing data equipment, people and business.” These new digital market solutions will enhance the resilience of critical energy installations and networks, reduce human losses by preventing high-risk accidents, decrease energy production disruption, and minimise environmental and economic impact and material damage from natural and man-made disasters. In addition, they will lower customer operational expenditures and unscheduled downtime, thus maximising production and optimising investment decisions. Digital platform UNO a game changer for oil, gas, chemicals and energy sectors “UNO’s impact on the market is the project’s most impressive achievement,” notes CEO Helder Araújo. “Its validation at refinery and petrochemical plants and energy companies underscored the relevance of a digital strategy for the process’s asset management.” UNO fulfils this need by being a cost-effective, user-friendly web-based tool that delivers end-to-end digital asset management service. “These markets want to establish partnerships to implement solutions that can drive operational excellence, and we proved that UNO can be the right choice.” “At our B2B dissemination meetings, partners and customers showed tremendous interest in UNO once it minimises their pains in implementing digital transformation on operations, predictive maintenance and on inspection monitoring solutions integration,” explains Hugo Branquinho, Digital Solutions Vice President. NANO innovations will help complex and high-risk industries control their process and production in real time. “The solutions allow our clients to predict instead of to react,” says Araújo. Companies will have a complete picture of their business, know their assets like never before, and plan their actions timely and assertively. According to Araújo, the digital asset management service and UNO have received positive feedback from several companies. EQS Global is focused on expanding business operations with UNO, MOT and FUSION. After Europe, it has its sights set on Canada and the United States and “planning to ride the waves of digital transformation,” concludes Branquinho.
Keywords
NANO, UNO, asset management, MOT, FUSION, critical energy installations and networks, integrity failures, digital asset management service, modular industrial digital platform, magnetooptical transducer
