Irene Gabler

SLB, US

Innovation for a Low Carbon Future

With the paradigm shift towards sustainable development from the growth-oriented themes of the past decades, research and technology teams have to innovate before requirements are articulated by their customers. Yet, breakthrough innovation often happens when technical teams are highly knowledgeable about the business of their customers and are able to resolve pain points in their customers’ value chain.

In this talk, I will share the approach SLB is taking to innovate for a low-carbon world. Our engineering teams are systematically establishing sustainability impact on our customers’ operations for all products that we bring to market, based on a deep analysis of emissions that our customers incur in their operations. This understanding of the key challenges that our customers face to operate sustainably also fuels our collaboration for innovation across the value chain, with customers, suppliers, academia, and the climate tech start-up ecosystem.

Biography

Irene Gabler is Product Development Manager, Sustainability at SLB, a position she assumed in April 2022. Gabler leads the development of SLB technology to decarbonize the exploration, development and production of oil & gas reservoirs. Prior to this assignment, Gabler served as Global Reliability Manager, and earlier as Wireline Group Manager responsible for the Engineering and Manufacturing of SLB Wireline technology.

Gabler joined SLB as a design engineer in 1995 and worked in different positions in product development and manufacturing for seismic, drilling, completions, coiled tubing and wireline applications in Europe and the US.

Fabian Kapp 

Graebener Maschinentechnik, DE

Future meets fabrication: Challenges in production technology for the hydrogen market

This presentation illustrates the challenges and developments in production technology for the hydrogen market and provides a detailed insight into the technological advances that have shaped the industry over the last two decades.

It shows that for a functioning product, not only innovative production techniques but also the coordination of the individual production steps are crucial.

Furthermore, the speech relates the technical and market-related dimensions: It shows how technological innovations are influencing production methods and market opportunities in the hydrogen sector, and which obstacles need to be overcome in order to finally realize scaling and commercial implementation.

Biography

Fabian Kapp is the Managing Director of Gräbener Maschinentechnik GmbH & Co. KG. He represents the 4th generation leader of the more than 100 years old custom machine building company, in which his family holds a majority stake. He joined the company in 2009 as a graduate engineer in electrical engineering. In 2016, he became an authorized officer and member of the management board. Soon after that, he founded Graebener Inc. based in the USA and in 2017 started bundling the sales activities in China through a strategic partnership. With a focus on the Graebener® Bipolar Plate Technologies business unit, Fabian Kapp consistently continues the more than 20 years of research and development of manufacturing technologies for metallic bipolar plates of fuel cells and electrolyzers. With its core competences in forming, cutting, welding and straightening and the expansion of its in-house production laboratory, Graebener® BPT today covers all the essential steps of the value-added chain to further develop the manufacturing processes necessary for the production of metallic bipolar plates. The company offers customer-specific, fully automated production lines for the manufacturing of bipolar plates – from the coil to the finished bipolar plate. In addition to this, Graebener® BPT supports its customers from engineering through prototyping up to small series production and – with its stack press – in the technical testing of stacks.

Gräbener Maschinentechnik GmbH & Co. KG. speakers’ presentations are designed as event-related material and therefore may not be reproduced due to copyright and competition law reasons.

Dr Roberto Losito 

CERN, CH

Sustainability and future accelerators, challenge or opportunity?

CERN is the world’s largest laboratory for physics based on particle accelerators. Everything starts form a low energy (at CERN’s scale) linear accelerator injecting into a ring, and then particles are accelerated and sent through larger and larger rings up to the 27 km long Large Hadron Collider (LHC). At the end of each accelerator, experimental areas can take beams at intermediate energies to perform experiment of nuclear and particle physics, antimatter studies, test of detectors and components etc…

In order to run such a variety of experiments, CERN uses materials and natural resources. At the beginning of this century efforts were started to rationalize and limit the consumption of energy and water. Today this effort is extended to all activities and resources, with results published in a simple bi-annual Environmental Report relating about the main factors impacting the environment, and the strategies put in place to reduce it.

I will give an overview of the efforts CERN is making to reduce its impact on the environment and on global warming, where cultural change is probably the factor that will bring will have the largest impact.

Biography

Roberto Losito joined CERN in 1995 as an Electrical Engineer for the design and construction of Radiofrequency systems, both for normal conducting and Superconducting systems in the LHC. He then took the leadership of the Sources, Targets and Interactions group, where he managed, among others, a programme for the development of radiation tolerant electronics, and setup the first centralised  service for robotics at CERN. In 2016 he was appointed head of the Engineering Department for five years, managing the Technical Infrastructure, shutdown coordination and the experimental areas of CERN , and is now advisor for R&D and Technology for the Future Circular Collider (FCC) and the Muon Collider Studies, and chair of the Sustainable Accelerators Panel at CERN.

Dr Gabriel Schaumann 

Focused Energy Inc., DE

Targetry for Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE)

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) has recently demonstrated laser driven inertial fusion ignition and Deuterium-Tritium (DT) fuel burn together with the first energy gain from any controlled fusion reactions. Thus, the promising concept of the proton Fast Ignition (pFI) fusion, now opens a credible path towards a commercial fusion power plant that can provide baseload electricity to the grid. Focused Energy is a US/German startup that has gathered the world experts in inertial fusion. It is our mission to develop an integrated reactor systems design and demonstrate the technical feasibility of a combined laser-, reactor- and targetry system that will need to operate at a laser and target shot rate of 10Hz to be commercially viable. This shot rate equates to 864.000 cryogenic DT-targets per 24h.

A proton fast ignition target is a meticulously engineered micro-structure, designed to enable robust compression of the DT fuel up to a multiple of the solid-state density, while enabling the creation of an intense ion beam that ignites the fusion reaction. The reliable production and injection into the reactor chamber of that many individual micro-targets with stringent geometrical and material requirements, poses a major engineering challenge. This talk elaborates on the basic concepts of a pFI fusion power plant with a focus on targetry comprising both precision target fabrication and fielding at the reactor.

Biography

• Studied Physics at TU-Darmstadt
• Dissertation in the field of Laser-Plasma physics / 2007
• Worked at “Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, England” as a Micro-Physicist in the realm of Target fabrication for high power laser–matter interaction experiments / 2008-2009
• Target scientist at “Institut for Nuclear Physics, TU-Darmstadt” / 2009 – today
• Head of targetry, group leader at Focused Energy / 2021 – today