by Gary Mintchell | Dec 22, 2022 | Business, Capital Projects, News
[Note: If you had previously signed up to receive new posts via email, you’ve noticed that they stopped and then restarted. WordPress had notified me that this service had ended. I recently saw where it was active, but not supported. It’s on for as long as WordPress enables it or until you unsubscribe.
You can subscribe to an occasional newsletter that I’ve been playing around with. It comes through my HEY.com email account. If you haven’t checked out Hey, give it a look. I haven’t moved my business email there, yet, but I like the new take on an email client. My email address there is [email protected]. The newsletter is at https://world.hey.com/garymintchell and you subscribe there or get the RSS feed for your reader.]
Click on the link on my homepage for the Carbon Almanac. It is a volunteer effort to compile information about carbon and climate change. I made a very minor contribution, but I do promote the work.
Process automation technology developers have become focused on such areas as energy saving, carbon capture, methane leak detection, and so forth. I view these as ethically valid—and also valid examples of Lean…reducing waste.
ABB has become a leader of the pack. I have two recent pieces of news about programs. One is an independent report to help discover problems and solutions; the other is a use case with an end user partner.
ABB Energy Report
- Energy efficiency is the best way for industry to cut costs and reduce emissions right now
- Independent report highlights 10 actions to help industrial users improve their energy efficiency right now
- Improving energy efficiency will reduce energy bills and emissions substantially in the short- to mid-term, without compromising productivity
- Industry is the world’s largest consumer of electricity, natural gas and coal, and accounts for 42 percent of electricity demand
A new report from the Energy Efficiency Movement shows that improving industrial energy efficiency is the fastest and most effective way for a business to cut energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. The Energy Efficiency Movement is a global forum of around 200 organizations sharing ideas, best practices and commitments to create a more energy-efficient world.
The “Industrial energy efficiency playbook” includes 10 actions that a business can take to improve its energy efficiency, reduce energy costs and lower emissions right now. It focuses on mature, widely available technology solutions that will deliver rapid results and ROI – and are capable of being deployed at scale.
Industry is the world’s largest consumer of electricity, natural gas and coal, according to the IEA, accounting for 42 percent of total electricity demand, equal to more than 34 exajoules of energy.[1] The iron, steel, chemical and petrochemical industries are the largest consumers of energy among the world’s top-five energy-consuming countries – China, United States, India, Russia and Japan. This energy consumption carries high costs in the current inflationary environment. It was also responsible for nine gigatons of CO2, equal to 45 percent of total direct emissions from end-use sectors in 2021, according to the IEA.
Organizations interviewed for the report include ABB, Alfa Laval, DHL Group, the IEA, Microsoft and ETH Zürich, the Swiss federal institute of technology. The contributors’ recommendations range from carrying out energy audits to right-sizing industrial machines that are often too big for the job at hand, which wastes energy. Moving data from on-site servers and into the cloud could help save around 90 percent of the energy consumed by IT systems. Speeding up the transition from fossil fuels, by electrifying industrial fleets, switching gas boilers to heat pumps or using well-maintained heat exchangers will also offer efficiencies.
Further actions involve installing sensors and real-time digital energy monitoring to reveal the presence of so-called “ghost assets” that use power when on stand-by, unlike a digital twin that can simulate efficiency actions without interrupting production. Using smart building solutions to control power systems, lighting, blinds and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) will also save energy in industrial facilities.
Other recommendations include installing variable speed drives which can improve the energy efficiency of a motor-driven system by up to 30 percent, yielding immediate cost and emissions benefits. If the more than 300 million industrial electric motor-driven systems currently in operation were replaced with optimized, high-efficiency motors, global electricity consumption could be reduced by up to 10 percent.
ABB partners with Boliden to reduce carbon footprint of its industrial products
- ABB to use Boliden’s certified recycled and low-carbon copper in electric motors and electromagnetic stirring technologies
- Move supports ABB’s target of at least 80 percent of its products and solutions taking a circular approach by 2030
ABB is working with Boliden, the Swedish mining and smelting company, to build a strategic co-operation to use low carbon footprint copper in its electromagnetic stirring (EMS) equipment and high-efficiency electric motors. The aim is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while driving the transition to a more circular economy.
The partnership with Boliden forms an integral part of ABB’s strategic ambition to reduce the environmental impact of raw materials used in its products by replacing them with lower carbon alternatives. Apart from using recycled copper, ABB has committed to increase the use of recycled electric steel (e-steel) and recycled aluminum. The move is also an important step in closing the circularity loop that has already seen ABB designing its motors to be up to 98 percent recyclable, with the remaining two percent of materials available to be incinerated for heat recovery. Recycling copper, aluminum and steel offers energy savings of between 75 and 95 percent compared to virgin production.
The co-operation includes ABB placing the first order for Boliden’s certified recycled copper through Finnish metals manufacturing specialist Luvata. Hollow conductor wire made from the material will be used in ABB’s EMS products for both steel and aluminum manufacturing.
Furthermore, as of 2023, ABB will purchase Boliden’s low-carbon and recycled copper to cover the demand for its IE5 Ultra-Premium Efficiency SynRM and e-mobility motors produced in Europe. The two companies have also signed a memorandum of understanding that will see ABB supporting Boliden in identifying inefficient low-voltage motors across its operating units. These motors can then be replaced with high efficiency motors within ABB’s take back upcycling framework, with the old motors recycled to provide raw material for Boliden’s recycled copper.
Copper is a vital material for manufacturing industrial electrical equipment, but its production is energy intensive. To address this, Boliden has developed low-carbon copper that is mined using fossil-free energy and also produces copper using secondary raw material from recycled products. The carbon footprint of these products is 65 percent lower than the industry average. A typical 75-kilowatt (kW) motor weighing 650 kg might include 80 kg of copper. Using Boliden’s copper saves approximately 200 kg of CO₂ emissions for every one of these motors manufactured. Each stirrer has up to 2,700 kg of copper, saving up to 6,700 kg of CO2 per stirrer.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 20, 2022 | Automation, News, Robots
[Note: If you had previously signed up to receive new posts via email, you’ve noticed that they stopped and then restarted. WordPress had notified me that this service had ended. I recently saw where it was active, but not supported. It’s on for as long as WordPress enables it or until you unsubscribe.
You can subscribe to an occasional newsletter that I’ve been playing around with. It comes through my HEY.com email account. If you haven’t checked out Hey, give it a look. I haven’t moved my business email there, yet, but I like the new take on an email client. My email address there is [email protected]. You can subscribe to the newsletter here or get the RSS feed for your reader.]
Cobots (collaborative robots) have swept the industrial world. I can’t believe it’s been seventeen years. The advances over the past five or so have been remarkable. This is a short piece about one company’s growth with a bit of history.
Seventeen years after it was founded by three visionary young researchers in a basement, Universal Robots has just reached a 1,000-employee milestone.
Universal Robots, the largest company in a fast-growing Danish robotics hub, has become the cluster’s first organization to reach 1,000 employees – one of only a few Danish companies founded in this millennium to hit this milestone.
Since its first collaborative robot (cobot) was launched in 2008, Universal Robots has grown to be a global market leader in cobots with offices in more than 20 countries worldwide. The company’s success is reflected in the growth of an entire robotics cluster, meaning Denmark is now home to more than 400 robotics companies, making the Danish city of Odense one of the leading robotics hubs in the world.
Kim Povlsen, President of Universal Robots, comments: “This is an historic milestone for us, and we are proud of how we have evolved from being a local startup in the basement under the university to becoming a global cobot pioneer and market leader. Above all, it shows that we have a fantastic product and that many companies around the world can see the benefits of using our robots to develop their business.”
Universal Robots started in 2005, when three young researchers – Esben Østergaard, Kasper Støy, and Kristian Kassow – from the University of Southern Denmark were frustrated by how the robots of the time were heavy, expensive and complicated to use. This gave them the idea to create a robot that is flexible, safe to work with, and easier to install and program.
As Universal Robots has thrived, so too has the Danish robotics scene, centered around Odense, a city of 200,000 people. The number of people employed by Danish robotics companies is forecast to reach 23,000 by 2025, while total revenues from the industry are already more than €2.8 billion.
During the past year, Universal Robots has hired more than 200 employees to ensure the company is ready to realize the enormous growth potential that lies ahead.
The UR President predicts an increasing need for automation in the coming years, driven by several different things: a desire to protect employees from dangerous and monotonous tasks; reshoring, where companies move production closer to home in response to an uncertain world; and above all, a shortage of labor which will only get worse in the coming years.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 19, 2022 | Cloud, Data Management, Events, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management
I had committed to a couple of events when the invitation to attend the AVEVA conference in San Francisco in November came my way. Many of my colleagues went out there thinking they had better opportunities to sell advertising than the alternative. Subsequently I received two announcements from the event. Both relate to data.
- Constellation Energy chooses AVEVA solution to enable easier, faster, cheaper data analytics
- Vision for connected industrial ecosystems revealed at AVEVA World in San Francisco
Weird thing to me is how marketing over the past few years regards data as something new. Way back in 1976 while working for a manufacturing company, I was moved from a position in operations to one in product development with the principle role as sort of “data czar.” I learned as far back as then about how crucial it was to have verified data in a form usable by all areas of the corporation. I was sort of at the nerve center for a few years.
We just have technologies for compiling, storing, verifying, and visualizing data that I couldn’t even dream about back then.
Constellation Energy for data analytics
AVEVA announced a partnership with Constellation Energy, provider of carbon-free energy, to give third-party analytic vendors secure access to select real-time data from Constellation’s operations.
Constellation will implement the latest release of AVEVA Data Hub, a cloud-based data management SaaS solution, which will help the company accelerate collaboration with trusted analytic partners and implement learnings more quickly, increasing the return on its analysis projects.
Currently, industrial operators, who are focused on data-driven solutions and decision-making, use a variety of methods to make real-time data available to internal and external teams. These methods are time-consuming to develop, maintain, coordinate, and some of them introduce security vulnerabilities that increase business risk. With IT staff in short supply, companies find themselves unable to respond quickly to new data requests or test out new solutions.
Constellation (formerly Exelon Energy), a long-time user of AVEVA PI System, decided to expand their data management solution into the cloud to easily share wind turbine data with a third-party analytics vendor. The company uses AVEVA PI System to collect, enrich, store, and manage sensor and time-series operations data in real-time. It then transfers that data natively to AVEVA Data Hub, a SaaS solution, where they can set up and manage select data sharing with authorized users, applications, and analytic tools both inside and outside the company. The new cloud-based addition to their data management solution is ready to use immediately; users can begin analyzing and processing data to achieve deeper insight in hours, rather than days or weeks.
Vision for connected industrial ecosystems
AVEVA showcases how industrial organizations are using real-time data to connect teams, empower them with data-led insights that speed up decision-making and unlock business value.
“We are witnessing the birth of an industrial universe that is completely connected, enabling a new kind of collaboration across colleagues, suppliers, partners, and customers,” said Peter Herweck, CEO at AVEVA.“Taking a data-centric approach empowers teams by connecting different players across the entire industrial ecosystem. This in turn transforms value chains into agile, profitable, sustainable networks. It is what we at AVEVA mean by the new, connected industrial economy.”
A recent survey, commissioned by AVEVA, of 650 senior international business executives across the chemicals, manufacturing, and power industries in North America, Europe, and the Middle East, found that 87% said they plan to increase their organization’s investment in industrial digital solutions over the next 12months.
Herweck added: “When you bring your data together and apply analytics so that you can visualize it in context, you unlock new ways of working. We are seeing leading companies like Shell and Worley breaking down data silos, building digital twins to deepen collaboration, drive transparency, and deliver actionable insights that enable their teams to work in a smarter and more connected way.”
AVEVA World has shown how leading companies such as Kellogg, Barry Callebaut, Pfizer, Dominion Energy, and Henn, starting to put in place the building blocks of these connected industrial ecosystems. As the adoption of cloud-based industrial software becomes more widespread, organizations will be able to engage experts within and beyond their enterprise to deliver on innovative capital projects, optimize the operations lifecycle, accelerate decision-making, and reach sustainability targets that drive responsible use of the world’s resources.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 16, 2022 | Automation, Sensors, Technology
LiDAR is on everyone’s mind these days relating autonomous vehicles—either cars or industrial vehicles. It is a cool light sensing technology first played around with in 1961 and getting lots of interest today. I received a news release from SiLC Technologies. The news is interesting. The release had the most superlatives per square inch of text of any I’ve ever seen. Here is the condensed version of this news that is worth your time to check if you have any interest in vision systems.
- SiLC Technologies Inc. (SiLC) announced the launch of the Eyeonic Vision System.
- High resolution
- High precision
- Long range
- Turnkey solution
- Targeted to robotics, autonomous vehicles, smart cameras and other advanced products
- Integrated silicon photonics chip
- Roughly 10 milli-degrees of angular resolution
- mm-level precision
- integrates all photonics functions needed to enable a coherent vision sensor
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 16, 2022 | Automation, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Security
I reported on a cybersecurity company new to me at the time last month—Mission Secure. With our schedules finally meshing, I recently talked with Jens Meggers, executive chairman. My pre-interview research further revealed that long-time contact Chet Mroz is company president. Other people I’ve know for years are also affiliated.
Publicity people fill my inbox with news from security companies. The latest trend concerns research the various companies have done. Studies invariably show that company executives lag in efforts to mitigate potential cybersecurity risks.
Most of the security firms I talk with either perform network packet sniffing looking for anomalies or they are hardware firewalls. Many are IT technologies loosely adapted to operations. Mission Secure adds capabilities including that and beyond.
Meggers told me there are new demands on the operations space. Threats have quadrupled recently and the landscape is broadening. Actors have gone from individuals to state-sponsored actors or even states themselves. The dark web contains exploits, information and technology for those bad actors who know where to look. Not to mention that the attackers are automating their activities.
Mission Secure has the capability to scan assets of its customers. Many companies can do that in order to see what devices need patches. Operations personnel find themselves swamped with patch requirement at a volume they cannot keep up with. Mission Secure takes a methodical approach.
Three steps
1. Find out what you have and identify risks
2. Who and what have access rights and why
3. Process for continuous validation, rules, define policy
I’m a fan of this process—mostly because it aligns with my training from when I first became involved with digital technology in manufacturing thanks to a VP I reported to. It fits with ideas such as those advocated by gurus such as W. Edwards Deming about process.
Here is a bit more description of Mission Secure:
Mission Secure delivers the only OT cybersecurity platform that enables complete control over your environment, including visibility, anomaly and threat detection, policy enforcement, and Level 0 signal validation.
Visibility
Discover and visualize every asset and every network connection in your OT environment.
Threat Detection
Identify unexpected or unauthorized activity, from Level 0 signals to cloud connections.
Policy Enforcement
Segment your network and enforce granular policies for true Zero Trust cybersecurity.
Signal Validation
Monitor physical process signals to detect threats and prevent system damage.
