ChemStaff Applies Aware Technology Solution to Improve Safety and Reliability within Nuclear Industry

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, Maine, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) November 23, 2011 -- Aware Technology announced today the licensing of its Process Data Monitor (PDM) solution to ChemStaff, an engineering services firm that focuses on the needs of the nuclear power industry. The license allows ChemStaff to remotely monitor conditions within its portfolio of nuclear power customers using a cloud-based delivery model. ChemStaff has been piloting PDM to identify production-related anomalies and to implement corrective actions at numerous client facilities since early 2011.

PDM was officially released in September 2011 as an innovative solution for condition monitoring and anomaly detection. Based on technology licensed from NASA, PDM applies both patented and patent-pending capabilities that facilitate the identification of both unique and negative behavior. Unlike typical monitoring technologies deployed in production environments, PDM is not limited to monitoring the performance of either individual variables or individual systems. Rather, the technology actively monitors the data streams from numerous, interacting sources, and it applies a clustering algorithm to recognize patterns – patterns that represent the fingerprints of unusual and/or troubling trends.

PDM leverages a powerful data clustering and pattern recognition algorithm first introduced by NASA and more recently enhanced by Aware Technology. The original NASA algorithm has been used extensively in the monitoring of complex systems ranging from the launch of the Space Shuttle to the control and maintenance of the International Space Station. With the release of PDM Aware Technology has broadened the technology’s market applicability, enabling enterprising companies like ChemStaff to employ PDM in specialized applications such as the monitoring of water chemistry at a nuclear power generation facility.

“PDM has become an essential component in our solution portfolio as it is clearly increases the value of our remote service offering,” shared Joe Bates, Founder and Principal of ChemStaff. “Using PDM’s pattern recognition capabilities we can see the relationships between numerous interacting systems and provide timely analysis of a plant’s dynamic water chemistry. Once a pattern has been characterized, we’re able to actively look for the same ‘fingerprint’ and keep a pre-approved remediation strategy at the ready. In the nuclear power arena, that’s a major step forward.”

Pattern recognition is particularly useuful at nuclear plants because they operate at steady levels and have extensive instrumentation and sensors installed throughout the plant. Any deviation from a normal pattern is an early indication that something is wrong. PDM alerts ChemStaff engineers and they can in turn work with plant staff to correct the underlying issue before it results in an unplanned shutdown or damage to the plant.

“ChemStaff’s application truly leverages PDM’s capabilities and demonstrates its value,” stated Peter Millett, PhD, Aware Technology’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “The combination of PDM and ChemStaff’s domain expertise within water chemistry is ideal for this type of application and it’s the prototype for our Smarter Remote Monitoring program. That type of combination is the cornerstone of our approach for enabling OEMs who have access to complex data and a need to”

PDM is licensed either as an enterprise application or as a cloud-based application. ChemStaff is the first customer to leverage the cloud-based model and they will be using it to monitor the performance of over 25% of the nuclear power facilities located in the United States by the end of the year. Earlier in 2011 Aware Technology entered into a reseller relationship with Control Station where PDM has been bundled with their PlantESP application. Control Station targets the needs of the process automation market.


About ChemStaff

The ChemStaff team comes directly from the utility industry. ChemStaff’s consultants have over 100 years of experience working in the chemistry departments of some of the leading US utilities including; Exelon, FP&L, AEP, Northeast Utilities and GPU. As consultants, the team has worked with nearly every US nuclear utility and many international utility companies on a variety of water chemistry related projects. The company founders held management positions in the nuclear water chemistry program at EPRI for over a decade and were directly responsible for several revisions of the BWR and the PWR primary and secondary water chemistry guidelines. In fact, at least one member of ChemStaff’s team has been directly involved in the development of each revision of the EPRI water chemistry guidelines since 1990.

ChemStaff is unique in that it brings both a broad industry perspective to bear on projects, as well as hands-on experience working directly in the plants and laboratories of the nuclear fleet. ChemStaff’s expertise spans analytical chemistry and radiochemistry to corrosion science and control as well as procedure development, laboratory management practices and 50.59 safety reviews.
www.chemstaff.com


About Aware Technology

Aware Technology delivers “Automation Confidence through System Awareness,” by offering automated learning technology based on a combination of NASA Pattern Recognition and Data Clustering algorithms and automation industry specific Intellectual Property. Founded in 2011, Aware Technology delivers PDM (Process Data Monitor), with an assortment of supporting products and technology, delivered as an Enterprise Appliance, or as a SaaS (Software as a Service) Private Cloud hosted application. PDM learns from the day to day operation of your systems and automatically generates an experience database. It then generates confidence metrics for usual behavior and delivers notification on unusual behavior.

www.awaretechnology.com

anomaly detection     condition monitoring     Nuclear Energy     pattern recognition     Process Control     process optimization     reliability     system monitoring