Boilers at max speed

At Aalborg Harbour, the last giant from Aalborg’s time as shipyard town resides. We’re talking about Aalborg Industries, and not only has the company survived – it’s prospering, and people are bustling in the company who’s manufacturing boilers, primarily for the shipping industry. One of the reasons for the success is the continuous product development.

"When we develop new boilers, we construct different calculation models for the software controlling, among other things, the water level and temperature in the boilers. But our current system’s unable to handle the new regulation algorithms that are being developed. So we made contact with a series of subcontractors to make them find a solution for us,” project manager Claus Karstensen, Aalborg Industries explains.

But the proposals that the subcontractors presented were not optimum. Then Claus Karstensen got to talking to vice director of CISS Henrik Schiøler.

Chose to use open standards

"He offered collaboration on the development of a system fitting our needs. I was sceptical at the beginning because at that time, it was our policy here at Aalborg Industries not to have in-house hardware or software development. But the management gave their permission to the development of a prototype system that we were able to present – and then we got the mandate to developing a commercial product,” Claus Karstensen explains.

"We’ve chosen to use standard technology as far as it is at all possible – what is called COTS, Commercial Off The Shelf. That is, software based on open standards such as Linux and ordinary PC hardware. But what we’re developing is to a very large degree a safety critical system. Steam is an invisible gas, and it’s extremely important that the steam coming from the boilers is clean – only a few drops of water may shatter the turbine blades,” Henrik Schiøler explains.

At the moment, two student project groups and several PhD students are working on the project that is expected to be finished in a couple of years’ time.

Use the university!

"For a Research & Development department such as ours, being able to draw upon the knowledge present at Aalborg University is an incredible strengthening. By our nature, we’re very product-oriented, whereas the people at the university, Jens Dalgaard Nielsen and Jan Jakob Jessen, have the necessary expertise," Claus Karstensen points out and continues:

"Many more companies ought to take advantage of the chance to establish collaboration between company and research environment. The people at AAU are incredibly skilled! And I believe that Denmark will benefit from collaborations between research and industry."