Blog

I'm packing my bags for Dubai this week to speak at the United Nations Climate Change Conference - or COP28.

Enabling today’s industrial facilities to improve their availability, reliability, and sustainability is an important part of improving environmental ...

Weld strength is crucial to the operation of critical assets like submarines. Defective welds can result in costly repairs, restricted performance, ...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that hydropower was responsible for 6.2% of the United States' total electricity production ...

Digital transformation continues to gain traction across numerous business sectors. In 2022, companies invested nearly$2 trillion in digital ...

You’ve seen the signs on the gates of refineries and other process industry facilities: “This plant has worked 147 days without a safety incident.” ...

With large industrial equipment comes inherent risks and costly consequences when something goes wrong. Asset failures can send devastating ripple ...

The world’s supply chain continues to adopt modernized approaches as consumers expect fast, often overnight delivery of goods. By replacing manual ...

We all depend on the reliable operation of infrastructure every day. Our infrastructure is the silent foundation for our economic development, supply ...

Oil refineries help keep the world running by turning crude oil into products that heat our homes, fuel our cars, and serve as several essential ...

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) vessels create and separate gases using a high degree of pressure. The PSA process can be implemented across a large ...

The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting gathers government, business, and civil society leaders in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss global issues and ...

Inclement weather conditions can cause catastrophic impacts on power plants, especially during the winter months with periods of extremely frigid ...

Gecko Robotics is a partner to the World Economic Forum (WEF). This article was originally posted on the Forum's Agenda. Countless global coalitions ...

The U.S. Air Force is steadfast in modernizing its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) leg of the nation’s nuclear triad, the three-pronged ...

When flipping on a light switch, most of us don’t think twice about it. Having access to electricity and power is something that many of us take for ...

Steel corrosion occurs when metals are exposed to a reactive substance, including oxygen, hydrogen, or water. Add a powerful electrolyte like salt to ...

Energy security has been in the news a lot lately—especially here in Europe. Governments across the continent are struggling to answer questions on ...

In thermal power generation, there are a number of processes in place within the boiler to optimize the efficiency of thermal energy exchange, ...

Anhydrous ammonia is commonly found in the power and chemical industries. Within power, anhydrous ammonia plays an essential role in the ...

Asset health is paramount to the efficient and safe operation of facilities producing energy and manufactured goods. Ultrasonic corrosion mapping is ...

Boilers play an essential role in improving the efficiency of thermal power generation. Three boiler sections, economizer, superheater, and reheater, ...

As companies seek to optimize and automate operations, a new era of robotics-based technologies is stepping up to meet the challenge. However, ...

For the season finale of Route to Reliability, I sat down with Steven Treviño, a champion for promoting automated technologies to many global energy ...

In recent years, the non-destructive testing (NDT) market has seen many exciting advancements with applications ranging from bridges to buildings to ...

We're going to focus on critical infrastructure that every single one of us uses, day in and day out. I'm talking about the roads, streets, and ...

Ensuring pipeline and piping system integrity through planned inspections is crucial for operators to monitor damage mechanisms and avoid asset ...

When we consider the advancements of data acquisition technology, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly common for data ...

API 653 Tank Inspection, Repair, Alteration, and Reconstruction provides the minimum standards for performing these actions on tanks constructed ...

Corrosion under insulation (CUI) is corrosion that occurs in the base metal of piping, storage tanks, pressure vessels, and other assets when ...

Inspection work and the data acquisition part of reliability is seen as a set of dangerous, dirty, and dull tasks that often end up being quite ...

Assets in wet hydrogen sulfide (H2S) service, or sour service, environments are prone to a unique set of damage mechanisms that can result in ...

Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) is a methodology for assessing and prioritizing each piece of equipment in a process unit by its level of risk. It is an ...

Robotic ultrasonic inspections are quickly gaining popularity in a number of industries due to the efficiency and data density relative to other NDT ...

We spend a lot of time, energy, and money capturing the current condition of an asset to calculate the remaining safe use of the equipment. All the ...

Sour service, or wet hydrogen sulfide (H2S), environments are commonly seen in the oil refining, petrochemical, chemical, and gas industries as a ...

Aboveground Storage Tanks (AST) are vital assets for many industries including, power, paper and pulp, oil and gas, chemical, and even beverage ...

In the past few episodes of Route to Reliability, we've talked about the potential for automation and robotics to economically access hard-to-reach ...

The use of robotics for NDT/NDE is quickly gaining momentum as service providers develop sophisticated technologies for assessing critical ...

Nondestructive testing, or NDT, encompasses inspection technologies and techniques used to detect flaws, increase reliability, maintain asset ...

From the fuel tanks at the airport to the massive crude tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, Above Ground Storage Tanks (ASTs) are critical infrastructure ...

In many cases, unplanned downtime is unavoidable. Hurricanes, earthquakes, or other unforeseen natural disasters—similar to what happened in Texas ...

Today, we're going to take a step back, moving away from individual technologies and look at the bigger picture. I've been fortunate enough to spend ...

When most people think about robots, they might envision a leather jacket clad, sunglasses-wearing Arnold Schwarzenegger hoisting a shotgun, Star ...

One of the beauties of robotic ultrasonic testing technology is that it allows operators to see and measure things that humans alone cannot (e.g., ...

One of the foundations of a strong inspection program is the use of condition monitoring locations (CML’s). CML’s are specific locations where repeat ...

Gecko Robotics is a unique NDT company. Not only do we specialize in designing and manufacturing our own robots, but we also build an entire ...

Tank floors are a key component for inspection in a broad range of industries and applications. While there are a number of ways a tank can fail, the ...

A few years ago, I heard someone say, “If you’re on-site, you’re in danger.” That’s a simple statement that really stuck with me.

Speaking as an outsider, engineers sure do love acronyms! It’s understandable. Engineers are trying to communicate technical properties, readings, ...

In previous blogs, we have touched on Phased Array technology, a modern ultrasonic testing technique that is commonly deployed at oil and gas ...

In a previous blog, we discussed Hydrogen Induced Cracking (HIC) and how to detect it. Stress-Oriented Hydrogen Induced Cracking, or SOHIC, is a type ...

Happy Earth Day, Earthlings. We, the Robots, are here to help! As the world momentarily pauses in celebration of Earth Day, let’s reflect on the ...

Automating Non-Intrusive Inspections Provides Faster Inspections and Better Results Pressure vessels and other process equipment are traditionally ...

As March comes to a close, we reflect on the trailblazing women who led the way to change by celebrating Women’s History Month and the theme of ...

In mid-February, unprecedented winter storm Uri left several million Texans without heat, power, and water, disrupting energy systems and sending ...

The Nondestructive Evaluation and Testing (NDE/NDT) field is an in-demand career option offering substantial room for advancement, diverse field ...

The unique aspect of Gecko Robotics is that we are an industrial inspections company mated with a software and hardware product development company; ...

Ultrasonic testing (UT) is a branch of nondestructive testing techniques that involve emitting high-frequency sound energy, or ultrasonic waves, into ...

New Year; New Developments Nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT/NDE) techniques used to evaluate the condition or properties of materials, ...

When It Comes To Plant Inspections, One Size Does NOT Fit All Equipment employed at a coal-fired power generation plant is different from what’s used ...

Boiler Prep for Gecko Inspections When it comes to boiler inspection preparation, a common question Gecko receives is: What level of cleanliness ...

We are witnessing an inflection point in the approach to inspecting piping assets in the oil and gas industry, as well as other process industries. ...

Robust Inspection Data Delivered Without Taking the Unit Offline An overhead system is one of the most vulnerable parts of a crude oil distillation ...

Understanding the Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) Confidence Scoring System Driven by API 580 and API 581 standards, the first Risk-Based Inspections ...

RUG - the R stands for Rapid and/or Robot Rapid Ultrasonic Gridding (aka RUG) is an innovative inspection process of creating data-rich visual grid ...

Older Boilers are like Older Automobiles - Things Just Wear Down While the drumbeat of boiler retirement is unabated, many power generation companies ...