CZERO ENGINEERING SERVICES
We offer concept-to-prototype mechanical engineering R&D for oil and gas, automotive, and clean energy innovations.
OIL & GAS TECHNOLOGY
Intelligent, rugged wireless devices to monitor O&G machine health
The global boom in natural gas and oil extraction has driven demand for new technologies to improve the performance of drilling rigs and natural gas compressors, across growing fleets of field machinery.
At the forefront of this wave of innovation, Logimesh Technologies, with engineering support from Czero, has developed groundbreaking Logimote™ devices that monitor and analyze real-time machine-health data, feeding it to a cloud-based decision support system.
Logimesh’s unified Sensor-to-Server™ platform enables granular monitoring at the cylinder, machine and fleet level. “Up to 16 Logimotes are installed on each engine, providing a snapshot of the engine’s health every 10 seconds,” said Bill Gillette, Logimesh founder and CEO.
Multiply that by every machine in a global fleet and that’s a serious Big Data challenge. Logimesh readily handles this using a sophisticated edge-computing platform and advanced algorithms that translate raw data from the network of Logimote monitoring devices into actionable information for fleet operators.
The end result is valuable decision support for predictive maintenance to prevent lost production, which can cost an O&G operation over $10,000 each hour a machine is down.
Award-winning energy-harvesting technology
Designed for 15-year operation without maintenance, the wireless Logimotes harvest thermal energy—waste heat—from the engines they monitor, eliminating the need for batteries. It’s this technology that in 2012 won the Best Technology Development of Energy Harvesting at the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Storage USA conference in Washington, D.C.
Czero’s role in R&D
Applying our advanced knowledge of engine design and electromechanical engineering, the Czero team helped develop the Logomotes by performing thermal analysis, designing the housing and mechanically integrating all components, procuring parts, assembling prototypes, and testing the system. Our project challenges included assuring interference-free operation of the energy-harvesting wireless devices, ease of installation, durability, and safety, in an intrinsically hazardous environment.