Shell
OEM : Petroleum and Coal
We are a global group of energy and petrochemical companies with more than 80,000 employees in more than 70 countries. We use advanced technologies and take an innovative approach to help build a sustainable energy future.
Assembly Line
🛣️ America’s Bridges, Factories and Highways Are in Dire Need of Repairs. Bring in the Robots.
These days, Shell is able to keep the plant running, and keep repair personnel on the ground and at a safe distance as they operate wall-climbing robots that inspect things like steel holding tanks at millimeter resolution, says Steven Treviño, a robotics engineer at Shell. Using a variety of sensors, the robots can look for both corrosion and cracking. This helps the team shorten the list of things they have to take care of when a full shutdown occurs. The magnetic wall climbers Shell is using are made by a Pittsburgh-based startup called, appropriately, Gecko Robotics. After testing the Gecko robots at Geismar, Shell plans to expand their use to offshore facilities.
“There are hundreds of types of corrosion,” says Jake Loosararian, CEO of Gecko Robotics, “and we’ve been developing technology and software to analyze what kind of damage is happening.” Gecko began as a robotics company, but has since expanded into creating software to process the data its robots gather. The startup makes systems that are now used to track more than 60,000 assets across the globe, including power plants, pipelines, oil refineries, dams, U.S. Navy vessels and other military equipment.
When it comes to inspections, “often the data you need is literally in plain sight, it’s just hard to collect it,” says Bry, of Skydio.
Germany's Kraftblock raises €20M Series B for sustainable thermal storage technology
German climate tech firm Kraftbock has raised a Series B funding round of €20 million in a round which includes Shell Ventures, Finindus, Moore Strategic Ventures, A&G Energy Transition Tech Fund, TechEnergy Ventures and Future Industry Ventures.
Kraftblock, founded in 2014 by chemist Dr. Martin Schichtel and economist Dr. Susanne König provides sustainable thermal storage technology to many industries - enabling the decarbonisation of processes in the energy sector and ‘any industries from food to chemicals, paper, ceramic and steel’.
This latest bout of funding will fuel the company’s ‘visibility around the globe’. “We specifically chose investors who have their roots in industries such as food, steel and energy and who will help us to consolidate our leading market position,” says CEO Schichtel.
Norway’s Kongsberg Digital raises €84.1M to digitalise sustainable operations across industries
Kongsberg Digital, an industrial software company that claims to shape the future of work by changing how businesses design, operate and maintain their assets, announced on Thursday, June 1, that it has raised $90M (nearly €84.17M) in a fresh round of funding. The investment came from Shell Ventures and Idékapital. The new ownership structure will help Kongsberg Digital achieve its goal of enabling smarter, safer, and greener operations across industries and on a larger scale.
🧠 SparkCognition and Shell Announce a Technology Collaboration Aimed at Accelerating the Pace of Exploration Through the Use of Generative AI
SparkCognition, a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) software solutions perfected for business, today announced a technology collaboration with Shell to accelerate the pace of imaging and exploration of subsurface structures using generative AI technology. By using advanced AI algorithms to process large amounts of data and automate the analysis, we aim to improve the efficiency and speed of exploration workflows, leading to potentially increased production and higher success rates.
Databricks Announces Lakehouse for Manufacturing, Empowering the World's Leading Manufacturers to Realize the Full Value of Their Data
Databricks, the lakehouse company, today announced the Databricks Lakehouse for Manufacturing, the first open, enterprise-scale lakehouse platform tailored to manufacturers that unifies data and AI and delivers record-breaking performance for any analytics use case. The sheer volume of tools, systems and architectures required to run a modern manufacturing environment makes secure data sharing and collaboration a challenge at scale, with over 70 percent of data projects stalling at the proof of concept (PoC) stage. Available today, Databricks’ Lakehouse for Manufacturing breaks down these silos and is uniquely designed for manufacturers to access all of their data and make decisions in real-time. Databricks’ Lakehouse for Manufacturing has been adopted by industry-leading organizations like DuPont, Honeywell, Rolls-Royce, Shell and Tata Steel.
The Lakehouse for Manufacturing includes access to packaged use case accelerators that are designed to jumpstart the analytics process and offer a blueprint to help organizations tackle critical, high-value industry challenges.
Dutch thermoplastic composite pipe producer Strohm bags €15M
Netherlands-based Strohm, a hydrogen pipeline company, announced on Thursday, December 15, that it has raised €15M in a fresh round of funding. According to a statement from the Dutch company, this is the largest funding round in the company’s 15-year history. Strohm’s €15M investment includes a €10M commitment from ING Corporate Investments (a 100 per cent subsidiary of ING Bank), as well as a further €5M co-investment from existing investors Shell Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Evonik Venture Capital and HydrogenOne Capital Growth Plc (HydrogenOne).
Strohm says it will use the funds in accelerating the growth of its manufacturing operations and increasing capacity to deliver its TCP solutions to offshore green hydrogen and carbon capture and utilisation and storage (CCUS) markets. Besides, the money will also help the company’s clients in achieving their net-zero goals.
Shell International deploys GE Additive Concept Laser M Line to additively manufacture oxygen hydrogen micromixer
GE Additive has unveiled a 3D printed oxygen hydrogen micromixer in collaboration with Shell International B.V. The joint design and engineering project was undertaken at Shell’s Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam (ECTA), with GE Additive’s Concept Laser M Line system utilised to additively manufacture the micromixer component.
CEOs Are Dooming Business Travel — Maybe for Good
Take Akzo Nobel NV, Europe’s biggest paint maker, for instance. At its Amsterdam headquarters, Chief Executive Officer Thierry Vanlancker has spent the past year watching his manufacturing head, David Prinselaar, flap his arms, madly gesticulate and seemingly talk to himself while “visiting” 124 plants by directing staff with high-definition augmented-reality headgear on factory floors. A task that meant crisscrossing the globe in a plane before is now done in a fraction of the time — and with no jet lag. For Vanlancker, there’s no going back.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc has created online control rooms with interactive 3D simulations of oil platforms and plants, giving engineers virtual access from home. In Troy, Michigan, Kevin Clark, the CEO of Aptiv Plc, a former car parts unit of General Motors Co., is using drones and Oculus augmented-reality headsets to show customers the performance and manufacturing run rates of plants in Mexico, Hungary, or China.
IIoT builds new bridges to new adventures
Engenuity Inc. in Conroe, Tex., provides control automation and data integration for oil and gas and other industries, and recently found deficiencies in validation pressure testing of blowout preventers (BOP) and well-control devices. Because pressure tests are needed every few weeks for regulatory compliance, executed and recorded manually over several hours, and can cost up to $6 per second to run in offshore valve arrays, testing can cost millions of dollars per year. To reduce these expenses, Engenuity collaborated with clients like Shell International Exploration and Production Co., and developed automated, hydrostatic, test execution and reporting solutions, which use Opto 22’s groov Edge Programmable Industrial Controller (EPIC) for process control, automatic notification, and process history storage and replication.