Problem/ Opportunity

Based on industry specific applications, problems/opportunities may differ. Since we are have a platform for vision based solutions, glimpse of various visible problems are given in target customer slides.

Major Problems and their implications:

  • Human in the Loop (HIL) is limited by fatigue, oversight or negligence in continuous situational monitoring. This may lead to unwanted consequences in term of loss of production, damage to assets or enhanced safety and security risk.
  • Manual monitoring of multiple objects or events of interest becomes sometime difficult especially when trying to identify trends, emerging patterns etc. over a period of time. This leads to missing out on valuable insights to optimize or improve.
  • Beyond certain scale of operation, HIL makes processes highly inefficient or economically unviable.

 

Problem/Opportunity: An example use case for oil and natural gas industry

 

Problem and it’s implications

  • Flaring of gases from oil wells, natural gas wells, refineries, distillation etc. is the most widely employed method for removal of gases (approx. 25% of the annual natural gas consumption in the US alone).
  • Improperly operate flare stacks may lead to fugitive emissions of methane, sulfur dioxide (SO2), sulfur compounds and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) etc.
  • While being highly flammable , fugitive gases are cause of asphyxiation, asthma, respiratory disease and carcinogens. They are also a direct greenhouse gas and have huge economic impact.

Existing Alternative and their Limitations

  • The alternative solutions are sensor based gas detectors, differential absorption LiDAR (DIAL), differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) based devices.
  • Although sensor based gas detectors most economical, they operate in- situ and are prone to soot contamination and require frequent servicing and calibration. DIAL is highly accurate but is expensive, clumsy, and requires specialized skill to operate, DOAS based system are require specialized equipment setup and skill to operate.