ORLEN Unipetrol wants to be carbon-neutral by 2050 and significantly increase the share of advanced biofuels and petrochemicals manufactured from waste materials by 2030. Also, it intends to develop new types of manufacturing activities using energy from renewable resources. Furthermore, to accelerate the technology development towards sustainable and responsible solutions, the company has offered cooperation to startups and small companies with ideas with considerable implementation potential in the chemical industry.
“Out of 50 submitted applications, we invited authors of 12 projects from Czechia, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, and the Netherlands to showcase their final presentations. In the end, we selected three winners, and four other projects were so attractive to us that we decided to partner with them, too. We will develop the collaboration towards optimising processes and developing new products within the circular economy, digitalisation, data processing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things,” says Martin Gajdoš, director for strategy at the ORLEN Unipetrol Group.
In addition to cooperation, ORLEN Unipetrol offered a financial reward to the authors of the three winning projects. They include Brno-based Invanta with its AI Safety project. It develops AI opportunities in industrial security. “Many items and aspects in our industry need to be permanently and closely monitored. We must be able to react to potentially hazardous situations in terms of employee safety. Invanta’s project enables us to recognise these situations using machine sight and react accordingly, thus dramatically increasing the safety of our operators. In addition, the system makes it possible to check the use of safety aids and, for instance, notify the control centre if an employee collapses. After jointly trialling and finetuning the project in our research centre, we want to deploy the system in our manufacturing operations and processes as soon as possible,” Jiří Hájek, director of ORLEN UniCRE, commented on one of the winning projects.
The Tretus project submitted by bits and bytes technology originally targeted intelligent real property management and evaluation of facility management staff activities. “We plan to use this project to digitalised sharing of information among individual operating teams of the experiment base and researchers, which will make the performance of individual research assignments more accurate and streamline the processes,” Jiří Hájek explained. ORLEN Unipetrol will also use the Delivery Robot project from Brno-based startup Bring Auto. It will significantly contribute to robotising and automating smaller and larger tasks requiring transporting people, materials, and research samples. “In the refining industry, the fewer people move outside, the better. We see enormous potential in the robotic vehicle by Bring Auto. Therefore, we want to launch cooperation on a new prototype adapted to the challenging environments of our chemical sites. Specifically, we intend to adapt the current prototype suitable to transport samples to a variant specialising in detecting leakages or damaged insulation on piping bridges,” Jiří Hájek concluded.
ORLEN Unipetrol offered cooperation to other companies, too. It will help scale up the RevSep project focused on developing distillation processes. It will also deal with the H2ICE project from the Czech Technical University, using hydrogen as a fuel for combustion engines. It will also partner with Neuron Soundware, a company submitting a machine diagnostics and predictive maintenance project using machine sound evaluations, and with Biograda. Biograda presented a project on biodegradable waste processing and biocarbon substrate production.
With the ChemTechNext programme, the ORLEN Unipetrol Group reacts to the global challenges related to climate and the environment, fast technological development, and advancement towards sustainable and responsible solutions. The programme also wants to help develop new talents and business and improve the competitiveness of the Czech and European economies. ChemTechNext targets the future of the sustainable chemical industry, mainly advanced biofuels, plastic recycling, hydrogen-based economy, and Industry 4.0.
The ORLEN Unipetrol Group is the largest refining and petrochemical company in the Czech Republic. It focuses on crude oil processing and the production, distribution and sale of vehicle fuels and petrochemical products – particularly plastics and fertilisers. It belongs among the critical players in the Czech and Central European markets in all these areas. The ORLEN Unipetrol Group encompasses refineries and production plants in Litvínov and Kralupy nad Vltavou, Paramo, with its Mogul brand in Pardubice and Kolín, Spolana Neratovice, and two research centres in Litvínov and Brno. Unipetrol also includes a network of Benzina ORLEN filling stations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. With 426 filling stations, Benzina ORLEN is the largest chain in the Czech Republic. Since its entry in 2019 to Slovakia, Benzina ORLEN has been one of the fastest-growing chains and currently has 23 stations in its network. ORLEN Unipetrol employs almost 5,000 people and is one of the largest companies in the Czech Republic. In 2005, ORLEN Unipetrol became a member of the ORLEN Group, the largest crude oil processor in Central Europe. The ORLEN Unipetrol is also active in corporate social responsibility. Therefore, it pays equal attention to initiatives that cultivate and support sustainable development, education, local communities, and the environment.