Seminar: Christopher Jansen presenting on Designing offshore facilities for robotic operations and maintenance, 7th October, 1 pm
When: Thursday 7th of October, 1 pm AEDT
Where: This seminar will be presented online via Zoom, RSVP here.
Speaker: Christopher Jansen (Worley)
Title: Designing offshore facilities for robotic operations and maintenance
Abstract:
Robotics and drones reduce the dependency on people to work in remote and hazardous environments. They offer a more efficient and sustainable way of working across all phases of an asset’s life. This talk investigates the considerations which should be made during the design of new facilities or brownfield improvements, to ensure the value from the latest robotics technologies can be realised. CAROL is a robot, developed by Worley, which facilitates remote removal of hazardous material (catalyst) from reactors, precluding the requirement for humans to enter dangerous environments during catalyst unloading. It has been proven to provide safety and efficiency advantages during shutdown operations at oil refineries, petrochemical plants and LNG plants.
A central challenge during the development of CAROL, was to make it suitable for a wide range of reactor configurations, which of course have not been designed with robotic maintenance operations in mind. This presentation will focus on lessons learned from CAROL operations to date, as they relate to optimising reactor design to enhance suitability and maximise the benefit from robotic catalyst unloading. For example, certain reactor configurations allow for inert confined space entry to be entirely avoided while others still require regular entries (e.g. for tray removal). The talk also explores other prominent robotics technologies in the offshore industry looking at considerations which should be made during model, constructability, and operability reviews at the FEED and Detailed Design phase of projects.
Bio:
Chris Jansen is the product manager and co-inventor of Worley’s CAROL robotic catalyst removal technology. CAROL (Catalyst Removal Amphirol) is the world’s first commercial robot for removing catalyst and adsorbent from refinery and petrochemical fixed-bed reactors. Chris graduated with first class honors from the University of Sydney with degrees in Chemical Engineering and Commerce. He developed his plant knowledge and process safety experience as a process engineer at BP’s Bulwer Island Refinery in Brisbane. Chris now leads Worley’s global Robotics Digital Enabler Team.