Interview with Dr. Peter Smith, Global Technology Manager at Shell
Overview of Shell’s transformer oil unit As the senior technical person, based in the UK, I am responsible for all Shell’s product developments of industrial...
byTransformers Magazine
Overview of Shell’s transformer oil unit
As the senior technical person, based in the UK, I am responsible for all Shell’s product developments of industrial specialty lubricants, which include transformer oils, turbine oils, and some other lubricant areas such as process oils, refrigeration oils, etc. I have some 30 years of experience of developing and doing research to make finished lubricants, mainly with industrial-type products applied in industrial equipment, which covers transformers as well. I also possess good knowledge and understanding of different chemistries and types of the base oils, and performance-enhancing additives that are used in the base oils to enhance their properties even further than what they would intrinsically have to make them tailor-made for specific applications.
Shell has four main lubricant technology centres globally which provide support for Industrial speciality lubricants. The transformer oil R&D and product development is primarily carried out at our Hamburg technology centre in Germany. We also have a technology centre in Houston, in the USA, where the turbine oil R&D and product development is performed, and a new technology centre in Shanghai, China, which has the knowledge and experience to provide technical support for both transformer oils and process oils. We want to be present in China due to growth in power generation there, which is driven by infrastructure demands, population growth, and industrialisation. In fact, we are one of the main providers of power sector lubricants in the growth areas – in Asia and China – and we are working very closely with the main utilities such as the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) and its China Electric Power Research Institute. We also have a technology centre in Atsugi in Japan.
We have multi-disciplinary technical specialists (including chemists, and engineers) at our laboratories who are able to create candidate formulations and run specific tests to develop transformer oils that can meet and exceed the customer requirements. At Shell, we have been working in the power sector developing the transformer and turbine oils for over 60 years. We liaise very closely with global transformer OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) such as SIEMENS, ABB, Alstom/GE, etc. and communicate very regularly with them to make sure that we have a good understanding of their key technical requirements for transformer oils today, and the likely requirements for transformer oils of tomorrow and in the future. In addition, we work with universities and other research institutes to ensure that we can test and evaluate our products both in the laboratory and in the equipment in the field, and confirm that they more than exceed the requirements of the customer’s often demanding industry specifications.
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