Natural gas infrastructure clients are the first to use B&V data and artificial intelligence to manage their assets
Earlier this month Black & Veatch launched BVInfraIQ, a platform of digital tools that combines artificial intelligence with Black & Veatch’s deep engineering expertise and voluminous library of project and infrastructure asset data.
Created as a platform for infrastructure owners—who don’t necessarily need to be a client of the engineering firm—BVInfraIQ uses 100-plus years of Black & Veatch project information to try to help owners and operators improve performance of their assets, strengthen resilience, speed up decision making and contribute to long-term sustainability. The platform’s first targeted application is management of liqufied natural gas infrastructure.
Moving beyond monitoring and management of a single facility, BVInfraIQ converts operational data into intelligence on how entire systems work together, offering recommendations to improve performance, reliability, uptime and cost efficiency across integrated assets such as combined cycle generation plants, pipelines and liquefaction stations.
«Ultimately, we’ll wrap in some of our other solutions such as water and grid, but our first deployment is in the LNG space,» says Justin Ellrich, associate vice president and liquid natural gas technology manager at Overland Park, Kan.-based Black & Veatch. «[The system is] AI augmented or enabled. So we’re going to have some data processing capability, but what the initial build is going to be is some models that are physics-based that come from our deep experience in LNG and using our PRICO [technology].»
Ellrich stresses the platform is not just a data dump for artificial intelligence algorithms to process and give recommendations. «What we’re really embedding is the Black & Veatch engineering experience and technology experience to be a little more predictive.»
Ellrich adds that the intelligence and insights from the platform can be presented to operators in real time that the operators can see operations data onan hourly basis or a several times a shift basis.
Black & Veatch sees BVInfraIQ as a natural extension of the consulting and advisory services that it and other large engineering firms have come to offer operators and owners in recent decades Ellrich stressed that while the insights are based on Black & Veatch’s institutional learnings from 100 years of projects, no actual project data owned by previous clients is visible in BVInfraIQ.
The advances in LNQ liquefaction in BVINfraIQ, such as its patented PRICO liquefaction technology, form the basis of Black & Veatch’s Advanced Liquefaction Architecture announced Sept. 14 at the GasTech Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Ellrich says pricing for BVInfraIQ will be based on various services clients can pick from the platform.
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