Earlier this year, TotalEnergies signed a deal with Austrian oil and gas firm OMV to acquire the latter’s 50% stake in SapuraOMV Upstream for $903m.

Both the deals are contingent on preceding conditions such as regulatory approvals. The closing of the OMV deal is expected by the end of the first half of 2024 while the latest deal is likely to be finalised in the second half of this year.

TotalEnergies chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said: “Following the transaction with OMV announced two months ago and this new transaction with Sapura Upstream Assets, TotalEnergies will have full ownership of SapuraOMV and become a significant gas operator in Malaysia.

“The SapuraOMV assets are fully in line with our strategy to grow our gas production to meet demand growth, focusing our portfolio on low-cost and low-emission assets. We look forward to strengthening our global partnership with Petronas in Malaysia, a country where we see further development opportunities for our Company.”

SapuraOMV Upstream’s primary assets include a 40% operated interest in block SK408 and a 30% operated interest in block SK310, both situated offshore Sarawak in Malaysia.

In 2023, SapuraOMV Upstream’s operated production reached approximately 500,000 cubic feet per day (500Mcf/d) of natural gas, supplying the Bintulu LNG plant operated by Petronas, along with 7,000 barrels per day (7kb/d) of condensates.

The development of the Jerun gas field in block SK408 remains on schedule for a launch in the latter half of 2024. Additionally, SapuraOMV Upstream holds exploration licenses in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico, with a discovery made last year on block 30.

Sapura Energy said that it has been actively seeking to divest its stake in SapuraOMV Upstream as part of its restructuring efforts to manage its unsustainable debt and outstanding payments.

The net proceeds from the divestment will primarily be used to settle the amounts owed to Sapura Energy’s scheme creditors, which include its lenders from the multi-currency financing arrangements.

Sapura Energy Group CEO Datuk Mohd Anuar Taib said: “We are pleased with the outcome of this divestment, which we believe is fair and equitable.

“With full ownership of SapuraOMV, we are confident that TotalEnergies will provide the right focus to further develop the growth potential of its assets. This portfolio rationalisation marks our strategic shift away from the Exploration & Production business, as we enhance our core capabilities to deliver innovative solutions to the dynamic energy industry.”

The post TotalEnergies to take full ownership of Malaysia’s SapuraOMV Upstream appeared first on NS Energy.

The company and its partners Equinor and Sval Energy took a decision to move ahead with the project in December 2021 with an initial investment of NOK3.3bn ($300m). However, the total investments for the project are currently estimated to be around NOK5bn ($454m).

Hanz has been developed through a tieback to the Ivar Aasen platform, situated nearly 15km further south, on the Utsira High. The Ivar Aasen field, which is operated by Aker BP, has been producing since late 2016.

Aker BP is also the operator of the Hanz oil and gas field with a 35% stake. Equinor and Sval Energy hold stakes of 50% and 15%, respectively.

The total reserves of the offshore Norwegian field are about 20 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe). Located in a water depth of 115m, the Hanz field was discovered in 1997.

Aker BP CEO Karl Johnny Hersvik said: “This is yet another great example of what we can achieve working as one team with our suppliers towards a common goal and with shared incentives. In addition, innovative solutions with reuse of infrastructure and use of cross-flow well have contributed to lower costs and lower emissions.

“Development of the Hanz discovery is important for the development of the Ivar Aasen area. Production start from Hanz in 2024 will help us maintain good production from the Ivar Aasen platform.”

Following the delivery of the plan for development and operation (PDO) for the Ivar Aasen area, which encompassed the Hanz development, the project progressed by adopting an optimised development solution through the reuse of subsea production systems (SPS) from the Jette field.

This marks the first instance of production equipment being repurposed in a new field development on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).

Furthermore, the strategy for oil and gas recovery was revised to incorporate the utilisation of a cross-flow well for water injection. This change leads to significant reductions in power consumption, decreased chemical usage, and fewer seabed equipment requirements, said Aker BP.

Projects Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen VP Stine Kongshaug McIntosh said: “This development solution will be more cost-efficient and have a smaller environmental footprint than originally planned for. This is in line with Aker BP’s continuous search for improvements, where the goal is to produce with low costs and low emissions.”

The post Aker BP begins production from Hanz oil and gas field in North Sea appeared first on NS Energy.

In the realm of offshore wind farm component production, we embark on an exploration of cutting-edge technologies and processes that propel the sea’s renewable energy revolution. With the increasing global emphasis on renewable energy, the demand for dependable and high-capacity machinery has reached an unprecedented level.

These machines are specifically designed to manufacture the colossal wind towers that play an indispensable role in supporting the vital components of turbines. These towers optimize wind capture, ensure structural resilience, and seamlessly transmit the generated power. These crucial factors contribute to the efficient and smooth operation of the wind farms. Furthermore, the sturdy foundations that securely anchor the towering turbines to the seabed, along with a range of meticulously crafted components, form the robust backbone of offshore wind farms.

The Vital Role of Plate Rolls in Offshore Foundation Manufacturing

Offshore wind foundations play a crucial role in ensuring the stability and support of wind turbines in marine environments. The production of these foundations involves a series of specialized processes that are specifically designed to tackle the unique challenges of offshore installation. From strategic design and engineering to the construction of various types of foundations such as monopiles, jackets, tripods, and TPs, every step of the manufacturing process is carried out with utmost professionalism.

With extensive expertise in the wind industry, the Faccin Group delivers top-notch rolling solutions that empower the construction of offshore foundations, including those utilized for floating wind farms. These robust and oversized rolling machines effortlessly bend plates with thicknesses surpassing 150 mm.

The Faccin® 3-roll or 4-roll rolling machines for cans and cones manufacturing stand out due to a multitude of features that further elevate the overall performance. These remarkable machines boast a sturdy design and a heavy-duty base frame, ensuring unparalleled precision in every rolled piece. With their powerful bending force, they enable precise pre-bending of plates. Moreover, their electronic balancing system guarantees maximum precision. The optimized automatic calibration functions not only save valuable production time but also enhance overall efficiency. The hydraulic system of these machines is highly effective, providing high speed while reducing power consumption. The micro positioning technology ensures repeatability and enhanced productivity. Additionally, the special transmission system, along with the centralized lubrication system, guarantees reliability.

Offshore Wind Tower Manufacturing with Advanced Plate Rolling Systems

The fabrication of offshore wind towers encompasses a blend of cutting-edge engineering, steel manufacturing, stringent quality checks, and specialized surface shielding to construct sturdy and durable structures that can withstand the challenging conditions of offshore wind farms.

The utilization of plate rolling systems holds utmost significance in the construction of offshore wind towers. These systems effectively convert flat steel plates into curved, cylindrical, or conical segments through a precisely controlled rolling process. Subsequently, these cylindrical segments are joined through welding techniques to create a robust tower section.

The Faccin® plate rolling system, commonly referred to as the “Faccin® Wind Tower Automation System,” achieves even the most ambitious goals by producing hundreds of cans and cones per month. The system enables the fabrication of pieces boasting an impressive plate thickness of over 100 mm.

It is composed of a heavy-duty and robust 4-roll plate rolling machine. In addition to their large size and capacity, Faccin’s machines symbolize innovation, incorporating advanced features and intelligent automation to streamline the manufacturing process. With sophisticated control systems and precise instrumentation, these machines deliver unmatched accuracy and consistency. To excel in high-volume manufacturing and challenging industrial applications, the machine is equipped with an advanced hydraulic system that not only ensures flawless performance and mass production but also energy efficiency.

The system also includes a motorized feeding table with an alignment device, top and side supports, a clamping system for on board tack-welding, and efficient handling systems. All these accessories are controlled by a highly advanced fully programmable Siemens CNC, which can be operated by a single operator. With its advanced engineering, the Wind Tower Automation System ensures the automation of even the most intricate wind rolling projects.

The FACCIN GROUP Sets the Standard in Metal Forming

The Faccin Group, with its combined experience spanning over two centuries, proudly leads the way in the metal forming industry. Our expertise and innovation set us apart as we shape the future. Our distinguished group brings together leading brands – Faccin^®, Boldrini^®, and Roundo^® – renowned for their excellence in plate rolling, profile bending, and dished-head manufacturing. United under one roof, we offer the widest range of high-quality solutions available on the market.

Our group is committed to driving progress of renewable energy, understanding the important role our technology plays in supporting the growing wind power industry. We offer also a comprehensive range of solutions for the production of onshore towers, as well as door frames and flanges.

For further information, email info@faccingroup.com or meet the Group at WindEnergy in Hamburg, Germany, on Hall B2 – stand EG.352 (24-27 September 2024).

The post Exploring the Revolutionary Technology that Empowers Offshore Wind Farm Component Production appeared first on NS Energy.

New fusion initiatives want to move much faster, towards operation in good time to be the cause of significant carbon emissions by 2050. Now UKAEA, the site of JET and a centre for fusion development in the UK, has joined with the University of Cambridge, Dell and Intel to achieve that goal, by moving from the real to the digital world to design and test a fusion reactor. The team will be able to take advantage of new supercomputers – and deploy a new open approach to development that should make it faster and more robust.

Launching the collaboration, Dr Rob Ackers, Director of Computing Programmes at UKAEA said that the concept at the heart of the so-called STEP (spherical tokamak for energy production) mission is to put fusion on the electricity grid in the 2040s. He described this as “a moonshot programme to prove fusion can be economically viable”. The collaboration is an important part of that mission and meeting the need to develop and nurture the supply chain that will design and construct the world’s first fusion power plants.

Ackers was blunt about the task. He said, “There is insufficient time to do engineering [for the fusion plant] if we do it the way we have been doing it for decades”. Historically, engineering has been carried out by an iterative test-based approach, in which “we design and build prototypes and then evaluate them and move forwards”.

But that is time-consuming and expensive and now “we have 17 years to stand up STEP and plug it in. We need to think differently, change the engineering design process and take it into the virtual world.”

This is a path that is well-trodden in other industries, examples include the move from wind tunnels to computational fluid dynamics. But the fusion challenge is more difficult because “it is an incredibly complex strongly coupled system. The models underpinning it are limited in accuracy, there are coupling mechanisms to be taken into account, there is physics that spans the whole machine from structural forces, to heat loads, through the power plant, to electromagnetism and radiation.” A single change to a subsystem can have huge ramifications across the plant and the designers will have to look for emergent behaviour that will otherwise only become apparent when the plant is built.

The need to “simulate everything everywhere all at once” requires supercomputing and artificial intelligence. Akers says UKAEA and its partners need to use the world’s largest supercomputers and run simulations at 10^18 calculations per second (exaflops) to reduce the time to a solution, optimise the plant design and quantify risk in engineering.

The UK government recently announced additional funding of £250m (US$318m) to boost research into artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and engineering biology and it will also fund an exascale supercomputer. The team hopes to use that in the next 10 years to produce a digital version of STEP that can be used to dramatically reduce the need for real-world validation.

Dr Paul Calleja, Director, Research Computing Services, University of Cambridge, talked in more detail about the ‘multi challenge’ of a simulation that has to couple different types of physics – fluids, plasma and materials – and do it on various timescales, some very long.

Even with an ‘exa’ supercomputer to call on there is a long way to go in developing the tools that will use the full potential of a computer that will cost £600m (US$762m) and draws 20 MW of power in operation. Exaflop computing power is wasted if there is a ‘bottleneck’ in the computation process, such as slow performance of the code or access to data.

With Intel and Dell on board, the partnership brings together hardware and application providers and scientists to look at this as a holistic problem. Moving to Intel’s new GPU systems provides an order of magnitude more performance per flop, while Nigel Green Director of emerging technologies and solutions, EMEA, at Dell said there would be a step change in how the companies work together. Adam Roe, HPC Technical Director, at Intel, said the company was excited by the initiative, saying that, once informed by data, high-performance computing can move from simulation to more complex science.

What is more, by taking an open-source approach, the partners are effectively calling on the global industry to help with the challenge. All work is on open standard hardware and open-source software. The partners are looking at the so-called ‘middleware’ and how to make the programme accessible to a broad range of scientists and engineers not used to supercomputing technologies.

Open source would apply to tool chains and engineering approaches will be open, and that gains the benefit of expert, concerted development, the partners explained. Open source means “the methodology gets critical analysis, they said, while tool chains were “more critically analysed, more sane and better reviewed”. What is more, such software remains up to date.

Open source applies to the design and build of the applications. Will the information be open? The project is funded by the UK government and that always involves a requirement to share learnings and sometimes data other fusion developers are taking the same approach. But data sets and intellectual property will remain be proprietary.

Addressing the open source security concerns

The ‘open source’ approach raises an issue in a world where there is a growing fear of ‘spyware’ or loss of control to unfriendly regimes.

The partners dismissed that bogeyman, saying “very strong cyber security” would protect data. Such fears may or may not be justified, but in technical sectors that require political support, if they are not addressed at the highest level the effect can be dramatic. In 2018 the UK government forced China’s out of its 5G networks, following on from US sanctions, fearing that the company concerned could spy on businesses and citizens. Huawei saw its UK turnover fall from £1.28bn in 2018 to £359.1m (US$1.63bn – US$456m) for the year ended December 2022. The day before the UKAEA’s launch, UK television showed an investigation into whether Chinese-supplied cameras used for surveillance in UK cities give China an opportunity to do its own surveillance. For the public, clearly the fear remains that ‘back doors’ allow software to be controlled by others: it is a fear that has to be addressed.

This article first appeared in Nuclear Engineering International magazine.

The post Why digital world could be key to making fusion reality in realistic timeframe appeared first on NS Energy.

In this context, satellite analytics based on high-res satellite images emerges as a forward-thinking solution, increasingly sought after for its profound impact on enhancing precision across different spheres, including resource management. This technology not only promotes sustainable practices but also boosts operational capabilities.

Enhancing Exploration with Remote Sensing Data

In practical terms, remote sensing is crucial for numerous sectors. For instance, it aids agricultural professionals in increasing crop yields and plays a vital role in managing responses to natural disasters.  In addition to the increased accessibility of satellite data, companies can now obtain satellite images for free. However, to extract valuable insights from these images, it is essential to consult with specialists.

The mining industry, in particular, has greatly benefited from satellite imagery and other forms of Earth observation data. This sector has leveraged such data for a variety of purposes including monitoring of mining sites, planning of exploratory surveys, discovery of natural resources, and surveillance of environmental conditions.

One of the primary uses of high quality satellite images in mining involves the exploration for new resources through scanning for geological signs that are typically associated with specific minerals. Satellite imagery also enables mining companies to precisely focus their exploration efforts, improving both cost-efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, geospatial analysts utilize these images to map out the mineral distribution within a region. By integrating satellite data with other information like geological surveys, mining companies gain a richer understanding of the area’s geological makeup. This knowledge aids in pinpointing prospective sites for exploration or extraction and helps in optimizing mining operations by revealing areas that might be saturated with competing interests.

Use of remote sensing in the mining industry

Remote sensing via satellite technology is profoundly transforming the mining industry by facilitating operations throughout all stages of the mine site lifecycle.

At the forefront, satellite imagery significantly aids in the prospecting of mineral deposits. These images not only provide critical information about the terrain, such as roads, trails, and barriers, but also form the basis for creating detailed land cover maps. This is crucial for identifying potential access routes to exploration sites and assessing the environmental impacts of major projects.

In regions like Europe, where high-quality mines are nearing depletion, the challenge shifts to locating new deposits in remote areas. Here, satellite-based remote monitoring becomes invaluable, offering a faster, more efficient means of conducting geological explorations in inaccessible locations.

Satellite maps are essential for identifying visible rock layers and monitoring vegetation health in areas under exploration. They also play a pivotal role in monitoring open-pit mines during the extraction phase. For instance, radar imagery from satellites like Sentinel 1 is analyzed to observe slope stability and monthly changes in landscape where active mining occurs. This monitoring is vital for ensuring worker safety by promptly identifying and addressing potential hazards before they lead to accidents.

Moreover, multispectral satellite images are crucial for the renaturation of lands post-mining. These images allow for the continuous monitoring of vegetation and the management of issues like acid drainage, which is the outflow of acidic water from mines. The high-resolution data helps track the response of vegetation to stress, enabling more effective renaturation management. These images are also invaluable for assessing the potential for farming and other activities on reclaimed mining land.

Enhancing Mineral Deposit Mapping with Satellite Imagery

Satellite imagery excels in mapping areas with potential mineral deposits by leveraging the unique spectral signatures of over 4,000 known minerals on Earth. These signatures, much like human fingerprints, are distinct for each mineral and can be identified from space. Satellites measure subtle variations in electromagnetic wavelengths caused by the minerals’ chemical compositions to detect these signatures.

Advanced imaging technologies capture data beyond the visible spectrum, including infrared and short-wave radiation, which are instrumental in revealing structural features of the Earth’s surface. Through thematic mapping and spectral images, researchers can gather detailed information about the absorption and reflection properties of soils, rock compositions, and vegetation coverage. This data is critical for identifying clay deposits, oxide levels, and soil types, further enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of mineral exploration efforts.

Monitoring Environmental Impact

Satellite imagery has become a vital resource for assessing the environmental consequences of mining activities and facilitating reclamation initiatives. The increasing capabilities of high resolution satellites have enhanced our ability to oversee vast mining areas. These images are key to identifying and measuring vegetation loss, changes in land use, and pollution sources like acid mine drainage, allowing us to track contamination spread effectively.

Moreover, comparing before and after images helps evaluate revegetation projects and assess the long-term stability of mine tailings dams. Utilizing this data enhances the sustainability of mining practices and helps mitigate their environmental impact. Let’s see how that works by taking Australia for an example.

Gas Mining Effects On Farmlands

Australia, rich in unconventional gas reserves such as coal seam gas (CSG), faces a critical environmental dilemma. The accelerated extraction of CSG has led to soil subsidence, severely damaging vast tracts of agricultural land, particularly in Queensland where over 20 million hectares of farmland are jeopardized.

In response, the Australian government has adopted an adaptive management strategy to counteract these environmental hazards. This proactive approach includes stringent monitoring of environmental impacts and enforces corrective measures when adverse effects surpass predefined thresholds, particularly concerning groundwater drawdown.

Unfortunately, current legislation provides for compensation to affected landholders only within designated mining areas, posing a challenge for those experiencing damage beyond these boundaries.

While optical satellite data analytics offers limited direct observations of CSG impacts, it proves invaluable in tracking related phenomena, such as changes in soil moisture. Through platforms like EOSDA Crop Monitoring, landowners can utilize the Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) to detect increased soil moisture indicative of subsidence. By comparing these findings against traditional hydrological models, subtle yet significant alterations in drainage patterns and moisture accumulation can be identified, though linking them conclusively to CSG activities remains complex and outside current optical satellites analytical capabilities.

Progress Tracking

High resolution earth images offer a panoramic view into the operations of mining sites, providing pivotal data that maps the rhythm of production and shapes the logistics of the supply chain. This technological advantage allows for a precise overview of daily developments, granting operators the ability to monitor real-time progress, track the equipment, and observe ongoing activities with a goal of increasing efficiency and fine-tuning production outputs.

For example, operators harness satellite imagery not just for general surveillance but to meticulously oversee the day-to-day operations of mining sites. This includes the agile tracking of equipment movement and activity, essential for enhancing operational efficiency and maximizing production potential.

Moreover, satellite data plays a crucial role in quantifying the volume of minerals extracted. This information is instrumental in helping operators predict the lifespan of mining sites, schedule closures, and strategize remediation efforts, ensuring responsible management and environmental compliance.

The escalating reliance on satellite analytics within the natural resource sector underscores the industry’s pursuit of innovative solutions to navigate its operational complexities and environmental footprints. As satellite technology progresses, it becomes increasingly integral to resource extraction by promoting greater efficiency, safety, and sustainability. This evolution is poised to revolutionize natural resource management, heralding a new era marked by heightened efficiency and enhanced stewardship. 

The post Satellite data analytics in the realm of natural resource extraction appeared first on NS Energy.

The discovery is in production license 956 (PL 956) in which Vår Energi is the operator with a 50% stake. Its recoverable resources are projected to be in the range of 2-3.7 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil equivalent, which translates to 13-23 million barrels of oil.

Vår Energi views the discovery as a promising commercial opportunity for integration into the adjacent infrastructure within the Balder area.

Located 8km north of the Vår Energi-operated Ringhorne field, the Ringhorne North well was drilled by the Deepsea Yantai semi-submersible rig, approximately 200km northwest of Stavanger.

The rig also drilled two additional side-track/appraisal wells 25/8-23 A and 25/8-23 B along with the exploratory well.

Well 25/8-23 S targeted petroleum in the Ty Formation and Skagerrak Formation, encountering a 5m oil column in the Ty Formation with good reservoir quality.

The Nansen Formation, primarily targeted in sidetrack wells 25/8-23 A and 25/8-23 B, was encountered with 15m of thickness, showing good reservoir quality with traces of oil.

However, the Skagerrak Formation, encountered with a total thickness of 137m, had moderate to poor reservoir quality and was aquiferous.

According to the company, the new oil discovery reinforces the strategy for ongoing development of the Balder area as a sustainable production hub in the North Sea over the long term.

Besides uncovering fresh resources and confirming the northern expansion of the Ringhorne field, the Ringhorne North discovery reduces the risk associated with additional drilling prospects in the region, said Vår Energi.

Moreover, it creates opportunities for development synergies with other nearby discoveries operated by Vår Energi, such as King-Prince and Evra-Iving.

Vår Energi COO Torger Rød said: “The discovery proves that there are still opportunities in the mature areas on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, and I’m glad to see that our near-field exploration strategy is paying off.

“We believe there is more value to be unlocked in the Balder area, and we are intensifying exploration activities to maximise value creation from the existing infrastructure.”

Vår Energi’s partners in PL 956 are Aker BP (20%), Harbour Energy Norge (15%), and Sval Energi (15%).

The post Vår Energi makes oil discovery near Ringhorne field in Norwegian North Sea appeared first on NS Energy.

Azeri Central East joins six other offshore platforms that were already installed on the ACG field, which has been producing since 1997. To date, the offshore Azerbaijani field, located off the coast of Baku, has yielded more than 4.3 billion barrels of oil.

The development of the ACE project was approved in April 2019. It is the first platform to come online since the start-up of the West Chirag platform in 2014.

BP operates two more platforms in the Caspian Sea, which serve the Shah Deniz gas field.

The ACE platform and its associated facilities are engineered to handle a capacity of up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd), with the project anticipated to yield approximately 300 million barrels throughout its operational lifespan.

The 48-slot production, drilling and quarters platform sits midway between the Central Azeri and East Azeri platforms in a water depth of 137m.

Its jacket has a weight of 16,000 tonnes and a height of 153m. The platform houses three production risers, one for water injection, one for oil export, and one for gas export.

BP projects senior vice president Ewan Drummond said: “I’m incredibly proud of the team at bp for safely delivering the first bp-operated offshore platform fully controlled from onshore. This establishes a new benchmark for innovative engineering and competitive project delivery for our company and the wider industry.”

Oil undergoes processing on the platform before being transported roughly 130km via a newly established in-field pipeline to the Sangachal terminal onshore, connected to an existing 30″ subsea export line.

Initial oil production from ACE is from the first well that was drilled from the platform towards the end of last year.

Production from ACE is projected to ramp up through 2024, to approximately 24,000bpd as two additional planned wells are drilled, completed, and integrated into operations.

BP is the operator of the ACG project with a stake of 30.37%. Its partners include SOCAR (25%), MOL (9.57%), INPEX (9.31%), Equinor (7.27%), ExxonMobil (6.79%), TPAO (5.73%), ITOCHU (3.65%), ONGC Videsh (2.31%).

The post BP starts oil production from $6bn ACE project in Caspian Sea appeared first on NS Energy.

Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical assets, processes, or systems. They leverage real-time data and simulations to model the behaviour, performance, and condition of their real-world counterparts. In the context of hydropower plants, a digital twin of the entire facility can be created, capturing intricate details of turbines, generators, reservoirs, dam structures, and the surrounding environment. This virtual representation enables operators and engineers to gain insights into the plant’s operational status and behaviour without being physically present at the site. Moreover, digital twins allow for testing different operational scenarios and evaluating their potential impact before implementing changes in the physical plant.

Benefits of digital twins in hydropower

• Optimizing Performance: Digital twins enable hydropower operators to monitor the entire system in real time. They provide insights into turbine efficiency, water flow, and energy generation, empowering operators to identify inefficiencies and fine-tune operations for maximum output.

• Predictive Maintenance: By continuously analyzing data from sensors and historical performance, digital twins can predict potential equipment failures. This proactive approach to maintenance minimizes downtime and reduces repair costs, leading to substantial savings for hydropower plants.

• Safety Enhancement: Digital twins can simulate extreme scenarios and emergency situations, enabling operators to devise and practice safety protocols without endangering personnel or the environment. This enhances overall plant safety and mitigates potential risks.

• Environmental Impact Mitigation: Real-time monitoring of water levels and flow patterns facilitates better environmental management. By understanding the impact on local ecosystems, hydropower operators can make informed decisions to minimize ecological disruption.

• Improved Decision-making: Digital twins provide a data-driven foundation for decision-making. Operators can simulate the consequences of different strategies, leading to well-informed choices regarding plant configurations and energy generation.

Enhancing flexibility and efficiency in the value chain

Digital twins call for powerful software systems that seamlessly implement them along the entire value chain of hydropower plants. From planning and designing products, machines, and plants to operating products and production systems, this integration empowers users to act more flexibly and efficiently, customizing their manufacturing processes.

• Digital Twin of Product: The digital twin of a hydropower product is created as early as the definition and design stage. Engineers can simulate and validate product properties based on specific requirements, such as stability, intuitive use, aerodynamics, and reliability. Whether it involves mechanics, electronics, software, or system performance, the digital twin allows for thorough testing and optimization, resulting in better-performing products.

• Digital Twin of Production: The digital twin of production encompasses every aspect, from machines and plant controllers to entire production lines in a virtual environment. This simulation process optimizes production in advance, leveraging PLC code generation and virtual commissioning. By identifying and preventing sources of error or failure before actual operation begins, this approach saves time and lays the groundwork for efficient mass production, even for complex production routes.

• Digital Twin of Performance: The digital twin of performance is continuously fed with operational data from products or the production plant. This enables constant monitoring of status data from machines and energy consumption data from manufacturing systems. As a result, predictive maintenance can be performed to prevent downtime and optimize energy consumption. Companies can also leverage data-driven services to develop new business models, enhancing overall efficiency in their operations.

Siemens Digital Enterprise Suite

To facilitate the adoption of digital twins in the hydropower industry, the Siemens Digital Enterprise Suite offers a comprehensive and integrated set of software and automation solutions. A central data platform enables the digitalization of the entire value-added process, while intelligent industrial communication networks facilitate seamless data exchanges within different production modules, collecting operational data in real time.

To address growing industrial security requirements, the Defense in Depth strategy from Siemens ensures effective protection for industrial plants against internal and external threats. Additionally, MindSphere serves as a platform for developing new digital business models, providing state-of-the-art security functions for data acquisition and storage in the cloud.

Customers who have embraced the Siemens Digital Enterprise Suite are already witnessing impressive achievements. Special-purpose machine manufacturer Bausch + Ströbel has experienced increased efficiency of at least 30 percent by 2020, thanks to the time saved during engineering. Schunk, the world market leader in clamping technology and gripping systems, has streamlined its engineering process, leading to shorter project timelines, faster commissioning, and increased efficiency in building similar plants.

A Vuong Hydropower has embraced digitalization to optimize operating costs and improve efficiency. Leveraging Siemens Xcelerator portfolio elements, including XHQ Operations Intelligence and COMOS, the company’s leaders can make faster and more accurate decisions.

The first phase of their digital transformation, spanning from 2021 to 2025, focuses on creating a digital twin of their hydropower facility. By digitizing the system, A Vuong Hydropower gains access to real-time transparent data and reports, enabling faster decision-making and efficient monitoring of production.

Essential tools like XHQ Operations Intelligence provide real-time management and remote accessibility of production operations via a web browser. This system equips operators with reports, alerts, and online data analysis to enhance decision-making capabilities. COMOS, on the other hand, facilitates more efficient asset maintenance, reducing downtime and increasing overall productivity. The combination of these software products creates a powerful digital twin of the hydropower plant.

Challenges and future prospects

While digital twins offer immense benefits to the hydropower industry, their implementation is not without challenges. Integrating data from legacy systems, ensuring data security, and addressing computational complexities are some of the hurdles that need to be overcome. Additionally, developing accurate digital twins requires continuous calibration and validation with real-world data, demanding a robust data management strategy.

Nevertheless, the future prospects for digital twins in the hydropower sector are promising. Advancements in sensor technology, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing will bolster the capabilities of digital twins, making them more accurate, efficient, and accessible. The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices will enable a broader range of data collection and enhance the real-time monitoring capabilities of digital twins.

This article first appeared in International Water Power magazine.

The post Optimising operation and maintenance of hydropower facilities with digital twins appeared first on NS Energy.

In the most energy-intensive industrial sectors, such as petrochemicals, but also cement, glass and steel, the use of alternative technologies, such as the recovery of waste heat otherwise exhausted to the atmosphere, can produce both economic savings and a reduction in carbon footprint. This is why, especially in highly industrialised countries, there’s growing interest in exploiting not only the noblest heat sources, thermodynamically speaking, ie, those characterised by high energy content and high temperature, but also those flows with lower temperature and lower enthalpy content, which inherently would have a lower conversion efficiency. These latter flows need technologies that can be economically sustainable with a low upfront investment.

One possible approach is the use of ORC (organic Rankine cycle) systems, which, although based on the traditional Rankine cycle, use a fluid or mixtures of organic fluids of various kinds within the cycle. Thanks to this peculiarity, the choice of fluid used allows the exploitation of thermal resources with a range of thermodynamic characteristics.

Exergy’s ‘Smart ORC’ R&D project

To meet the technical and economic requirements for ORC systems suitable for the recovery of thermal waste at low temperatures, Exergy, in collaboration with Regione Lombardia and the EU, successfully participated in the “Tech Fast Lombardia” call for proposals of the POR FESR (Programma Operativo Regionale del Fondo Europeo per lo Sviluppo Regionale 2014-2020) co-financed by the FESR.

Exergy’s project was called “Smart ORC” and involved the development of a family of “mini” (less than 1000 kW) and “micro” (less than 100 kW) modular ORC systems with very high efficiency, building on the company’s proprietary technologies.

Thanks to the involvement of the Politecnico di Milano and local manufacturing companies in the detailed design and construction of the most critical plant components, an ecosystem for the development of further high-efficiency ORC systems and turbomachinery, both turbines and compressors, has been created.

The production of electricity employing ORC technology can be regarded as a form of distributed generation, and with the ability to input waste heat to the cycle as well as to meet the production site’s own consumption, ORC systems have the flexibility of being able to feed into the grid, self-consume or store the energy produced (in electrical or thermal storage systems).

In current small ORC systems, volumetric turbines, eg, screw or vane, or small centripetal radial turbines are used. Both these turbine types are characterised by lower isentropic efficiencies than those recorded for larger ORC-based power plants equipped with radial outflow turbines.

If volumetric machines typically have lower peak efficiencies than turbomachinery, settling at values of around 60-75% (isentropic total to static), centripetal radial turbines are penalised by the difficulty of having to dispose of the entire enthalpy jump in a single stage and, consequently, suffer from limited efficiency.

The adoption of the Exergy radial outflow turbine (ROT), a technology covered by several patents, has many advantages:

• concurrent combination of fluid expansion and increased cross-sectional area;
• mechanical components designed to be easily removable, without the need to empty the system, reducing maintenance times;
• extended bearing life due to very low vibration;
• reduced rotor leakage and friction; and
• greater freedom of choice of both pressure levels and stage pressure gradient, limiting vortex formation and reducing fluid dynamic losses.

Overall, it is a more efficient and reliable turbine technology, with low vibration levels and less noise.

The range of sizes of standard ORC modules investigated and developed in the course of the Exergy Smart ORC project has been selected to suit a wide spectrum of possible heat sources available in the industrial world: 80 kWe; 160 kWe; 210 kWe; 450 kWe; 600 kWe; 850 kWe (gross electric power).

The refrigerant R1233zd(E) is employed as a working fluid.

For these capacities, modular, compact and standardised technology enables, on the one hand, faster installation, construction and reduction in overall system costs, and on the other hand, with the selection of a specific working fluid, promises high performance in compliance with the necessary requirements of safety, non-flammability and low environmental impact.

The resulting low mass and volumetric flow rates, which are considerably lower than those found in medium and large-size ORC plants, required some adjustments to the ROT turbine, the component with the highest level of what might be called technological content.

The new machine was therefore scaled down to a smaller size, with higher rotational speeds, than the reference ROT turbine, in order to maintain its high performance.

The high rotational speeds required (up to about 20,000 rpm) led to the development of specific methodologies for modelling and performing calculations for ‘fast’ rotors, as well as the design and manufacturing of vibration reduction systems known as SFDs (squeeze film dampers), typically used in the aviation industry on commercial and military engines, to stabilise rotors operating at high rotational speeds. The great usefulness of SFD systems lies in their dampening effect on the machine.

Also, the pressurised oil chamber employed in the new machine and its fixed anchorage to the bearings provide a considerable further reduction in vibrations, which are exacerbated by the destabilising action of the rotor’s sealing labyrinths, designed to contain the fluid during its expansion.

In addition to the rotational issues, it was necessary to adopt a speed reducer for the mechanical coupling to the electric generator. While the efficiency of the turbomachine is a function of blade rotational speed, typically the generator has a rotational speed determined by the number of poles it has and the frequency of the electricity grid to which it is connected. A ‘slow’ generator is preferable to a ‘fast’ one due to efficiency losses in the machine itself and in the frequency converter (inverter) needed at high frequencies. With the aim of limiting transmission losses between the turbine and generator, a straight-tooth, seven-satellite, low-service factor planetary-type gearbox was selected, manufactured, and fully integrated into the new machine.

Family of Smart ORC modules

Following the promising results obtained on the test bench, through the R&D project described above, Exergy has acquired the necessary know-how to propose a family of Smart ORC modules plus the associated development of small and standardised turbomachinery. This broadens the application of Exergy’s radial outflow turbine to very small (micro and mini) ORC systems for electricity production from such sources as diesel engine exhaust systems and waste heat available in several industrial processes.

Application of the R&D to date is expected to increase the efficiency of mini and micro ORC systems by about 5 to 15%.

This article first appeared in Modern Power Systems magazine.

The post Exploring Exergy’s breakthrough in ORC technology for low temperature heat recovery solutions appeared first on NS Energy.

The H2Maasvlakte FEED study is being performed by Uniper, together with Technip Energies and Plug Power. The FEED study is supported by Topsector Energie (TSE) subsidies of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate.

Support from the EU Innovation Fund makes a “significant contribution” to the realisation of the project, says Uniper. The fund received 239 applications, from which 41 were selected, including H2Maasvlakte. The latter was favoured because of “Uniper’s commitment to transforming existing fossil production sites into green energy sites.”

The Rotterdam harbour area, which includes the Maasvlakte, is the largest carbon-emitting industrial cluster in the Netherlands, Uniper notes. In 2021 the area emitted 23.4 Mton of carbon dioxide and “decarbonising this area alone would contribute significantly to the Dutch overall target to reach net zero by 2050.”

“As a port authority we support, stimulate and help companies in Rotterdam to reach the Paris climate treaty goals in multiple ways, including getting infrastructure like a hydrogen pipeline network in place in time”, said Allard Castelein, CEO of Port of Rotterdam.

“The H2Maasvlakte project marks a significant milestone for Europe’s transition to more sustainable, localised energy in response to geopolitical risk and climate change,” said Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug.

The Port of Rotterdam (PoR) presents significant opportunities for green hydrogen projects, notes Uniper, with the presence of multiple potential off-takers across the planned open access regional hydrogen backbone representing a huge demand for green hydrogen.

The Maasvlakte Energy Hub is “versatile and strategically located”, says Uniper and “all the necessities for a successful energy transition come together here”, with power from offshore wind farms, a port suitable for the import of green fuels,
and “pivotal infrastructure” such as the high-voltage grid and the future hydrogen pipeline network (being built by Hynetwork Services, a subsidiary of GasUnie, working with PoR).

The MPP3 power plant, one of the key production units of Uniper’s Maasvlakte Energy Hub, has an installed capacity of 1070 MW and runs on coal, biomass and residual (waste byproduct) flows from surrounding industry. As well as electricity, it supplies steam to local industrial consumers.

The Maasvlakte Energy Hub also includes various gas-fired production facilities and a large hybrid battery. In the coming years, Uniper plans to develop applications for green hydrogen and bio-fuels at the hub, among other things.

Green hydrogen “will facilitate the energy transition for the petrochemical, mobility, power and heating industries”, Uniper believes and notes that in the Netherlands, the momentum behind hydrogen is growing.

Uniper says its Maasvlakte site “is one of the most convenient locations to realise a large scale green H2 project” and offers “multiple synergies” including:

• Sufficient land available for large-scale green hydrogen production.
• Ability to make use of existing infrastructure: grid connections; demineralised water; natural gas network (could initially be used to blend H2); and cooling water systems of existing power generation assets.
• Opportunities to recycle waste heat from H2 production.
• Availability of power from offshore wind, with 3.5 – 5.5 GW landing at neighbouring TenneT substation within this decade.
• Proximity to Rotterdam hydrogen network (Port of Rotterdam & Gasunie), less than 3 km away as from 2023. This will be integrated, in the longer term, with the national hydrogen backbone towards neighbouring Germany.
• Nearby hydrogen consumers (chemical industry) currently using grey hydrogen that will need to decarbonise to achieve EU targets.
• Ability to benefit from the major role the Port of Rotterdam is likely to play from around 2030 onwards in the import of hydrogen, for Rotterdam and the surrounding area as well as neighbouring countries.

This article first appeared in Modern Power Systems magazine.

The post How Uniper’s H2Maasvlakte project is set to drive decarbonisation in Port of Rotterdam appeared first on NS Energy.