One of the energy giants of the world, General Electric, has just announced that today they have a project underway with which they hope to develop a series of drones equipped with enough technology to be able to detect methane emissions and gas leaks in general of their platforms. Thanks to these drones, the multinational hopes that these shocking disasters caused by large leaks such as those that have been experienced in recent years can be avoided.
This new project has been baptized by General Electric itself as'Raven Project'and is called to become a standard that the entire oil industry will gradually follow since it presents a much more efficient and faster way to detect any type of problem on a platform. Attending to different details that have seen the light on the project, the Raven Project helicopters will be able to locate gas leaks 800 meters away in addition to finding methane emissions that could threaten oil wells.
General Electric is working on the development of specific drones to carry out inspections in its oil rigs.
The helicopters being developed by General Electric stand out for having a length of 540 mm long and a weight close to 9 kilograms. Despite this very contained size, these drones will be able to fly at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour with an autonomy superior to 40 flight minutes. According to the results of the first tests carried out on this project, thanks to these peculiar drones, inspections could be carried out three times faster compared to those currently carried out by humans.