Photo: Paul Cook, Business Development Executive
In April the Voovio team joined the NAPTA Troubleshooting Skills Event & Syngas 2022. Read here about our key takeaways, see photos & more!
Key takeaways from the NAPTA Troubleshooting Skills Event
Voovio’s Academia Program focuses on building relationships with our community colleges and other institutions who provide process technology education and opportunities. We always support the NAPTA community by sponsoring and exhibiting at their annual events. The Troubleshooting Skills event is particularly special, because process technology students meet to compete in an annual competition and they represent our future workforce. We believe in the importance of skills building and knowledge transfer through apprenticeships, industry specific diplomas and degrees, and being able to nurture skills from a young age. NAPTA does a fantastic job of helping American Manufacturing to stay competitive and attractive for job seekers of all types.
Congratulations to College of the Mainland for taking the top prize, followed by San Jacinto and Lincoln Trail College!
Images from NAPTA Troubleshooting Skills Event:
When and where it took place:
- 20th -23rd April 2022
- San Jacinto College, Houston TX
Syngas 2022
The Voovio team attended the Syngas Association’s 2022 annual conference held in Baton Rouge, LA. Syngas Association, in the past, has attracted Syngas producers, users, and vendors that support the industry. Syngas can be used for heating, fertilizer production, and hydrogen production. Producers/ end-users included: Methanex, Nutrien, Chevron, Mosaic (in the past, not this year). This year’s attendance at the conference was sparse; there were ~130 attendees (vendors and producers/ end-users). The conference seems to have been in decline over the past few years, and other vendors mentioned that a competing show, CRU – Nitrogen + Syngas, has been swallowing up the Syngas Association.
Topics presented by vendors at Syngas Association included typical chemical process plant operational/ maintenance/ reliability subjects. They also included syngas industry specific presentations, related to; Steam Methane Reforming (most common way to produce Syngas), Hydrogen PSM, and various Syngas catalyst/ reactor topics. In the future, we hope to see more discussion around challenges with the loss of expertise from retirements and turnover, unplanned events, LOTO and other key priorities for operations and maintenance.
We plan to continue bringing our Operational Excellence Platform to the Syngas market and will be presenting our solution to BASF’s Syngas customers in May after being invited by BASF, a customer of our Operational Excellence Platform.