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Koch Industries subsidiary making push for drone-in-a-box tech

Koch Engineered Solutions (KES), a subsidiary of Koch Industries, says it’s going to urge its customers to use drone-in-a-box solutions at their industrial facilities for emissions monitoring and reduction.

The development stems from the company’s own use of drone-in-a-box technology at Koch Fertilizer in Enid, Oklahoma. It appears that the usage of autonomous drones and AI-driven software at the site has turned out to be so promising that KES has now decided to collaborate with solution provider Percepto and get the technology into the hands of more people.

“Percepto’s technology has helped Koch company employees better assess risk, improve safety, reduce costs and truly transform their roles,” assures Tom Concienne, president of Koch Specialty Plant Services (KSPS), a KES subsidiary.

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KSPS specializes in on-site vessel fabrication, installation of process critical equipment, and plant services. The company feels that Israel-based Percepto’s solutions could become a key differentiator for industrial customers looking to improve their emissions controls and regulatory compliance.

The plan is to package Percepto’s portfolio of Air Max and Air Max OGI drones as turnkey solutions and offer them to industrial facilities as “KSPS Aerial Inspection Solutions Powered by Percepto.”

It sure helps that Percepto Air Max OGI is the only drone-in-a-box solution on the market that comes with an integrated optical gas imaging camera. As such, it allows operators to conduct high-frequency, high-quality visual and thermal inspections remotely while saving time and money.

Once the data is collected, Percepto’s Autonomous Inspection and Monitoring (AIM) software comes into play to provide customers with AI-powered reports of anomalies and trends. According to Percepto, this technology helped a US refinery to net approximately $15 million in savings with just one month of autonomous OGI inspections.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted Percepto a nationwide waiver for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations. This means Percepto customers whose sites comply with the waiver’s criteria can use their drones remotely from day one.

Ariel Avitan, chief commercial officer at Percepto, says:

Industrial customers using Percepto software have been able to minimize downtime, streamline compliance, reduce operational costs, optimize LDAR, speed up response time, and critically, improve safety while monitoring and finding ways to reduce their emissions. We’re excited to lead the revolution of unmanned inspections that helps industrial facilities optimize their operations and reach their ESG goals, and this partnership with KES is a tremendous next step.

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Avatar for Ishveena Singh Ishveena Singh

Ishveena Singh is a versatile journalist and writer with a passion for drones and location technologies. She has been named as one of the 50 Rising Stars of the geospatial industry for the year 2021 by Geospatial World magazine.