“ I think that ’ s a hallmark of this organization , the ability to get that real customer need and feed it through to our engineers and getting things done , tested , verified , manufactured , shipped , and ultimately , seeing how it helps customers .”
— Thomas Örtenberg , Vice President and General Manager , Global Level Business
the crude oil . These tanks had mechanical floats , and they had the same kind of issues as the marine tankers . Those floats got stuck and the tanks could overfill , or the reading wasn ’ t accurate enough , so the terminal operators soon started figuring out that those vessels coming into the harbor had something new — something called radar — and it seemed to work much better .
So , we started developing a radar-based level sensor system for those onshore tanks , and quickly learned that although we measure the same oil products , the customer requirements are very different . Different hazardous location approvals , different custody transfer approvals , different ways of operating the tanks , different materials of construction and so forth . By listening to the customer ’ s needs and reinventing ourselves , we developed a second system , which was intended for land-based tanks , and that went fast as well . We had the first installation in 1983 .
We then started to take the next step in our journey and realized that beyond all these harbor terminal tanks , there are many more tanks when you get into the refineries , into the chemical plants , into the power plants , and into the food and beverage industry . We realized that those customers each have different needs and hence need different solutions . Some of them want to be able to track changes in the tanks quickly , several measurements every second for control purposes , yet others want to be able to detect whether they have foam on the top of the surface inside the tank . There are all kinds of variations and versions here .
Q . How did the radar level measurement technology evolve further on ? A . Toward the end of the 1990s , we had designed yet another generation of radar-based level measurement devices to address the different needs that customers have in these different industry verticals . All along this journey there ’ s just been a tremendous amount of innovation of which we are quite proud . We have several hundreds of patent families covering radar-based level measurements , and a large number of them resulted from interaction with customers , responding to their needs , and understanding what their pain points really are . I think that ’ s a hallmark of this organization , the ability to get that real customer need and feed it through to our engineers and getting things done , tested , verified , manufactured , shipped , and ultimately , seeing how it helps customers .
Q . What would you say has been your main competitive differentiation ? A . As the inventor of this technology , we have had to find solutions to many new technical challenges . That would not have been possible without very solid in-house knowledge both in the radar field and in application knowledge .
What has further helped the market adoption is that the cost for the technology has come down the last 5 to 10 years . It is true that radar in the past has been cost prohibitive for some customer segments . From the beginning , this was a spinoff from military technology and that comes with a price , but as we and others have driven the technology development , things have matured and we ’ ve been able to integrate various circuits and then create smarter solutions , rely more on software , so that ’ s certainly helping .
Q . What can we look forward to in the years ahead concerning radar technology ? A . Whether it ’ s in our homes , at work , or where we go shopping in the grocery store , the IoT revolution calls for more sensing technology and the insight that comes with such measurements . Wherever the use-case , there is more demand for awareness than ever before and radar is proven to be a very good technology for many of those sensing needs .
Potentially , in markets like wastewater or food and beverage , you can use radar for many things other than standard applications in tanks . If you think about it , radar is a distance measurement device . Wherever you have a need to measure a distance , you could use radar .
3 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT • January 2023