Turbomachinery News Network: Yokogawa Electric, Everllence, Concepts NREC, and more

Welcome to the 21^st edition of the Turbomachinery News Network. I’m James Cook, associate editor at Turbomachinery International.

The Yokogawa Electric Corp. successfully deployed industrial AI solutions—numerous autonomous control AI agents—at Aramco’s Fadhili Gas Plant in Saudi Arabia to improve operational efficiency. The company’s technology uses multiple coordinated AI agents under the Factorial Kernel Dynamic Policy Programming: a reinforcement learning-based AI algorithm that directly and autonomously controls and optimizes acid gas removal operations.

The Jafurah Cogeneration Independent Steam and Power Plant began commercial operations approximately 125 km southeast of Dammam, Saudi Arabia. The ISPP leverages GE Vernova’s core power plant equipment, 7HA.01 gas turbine, and 20-year service agreement which includes maintenance and parts supply to manage the engine’s lifecycle.The facility will generate up to 314 tons of steam/hour and up to 320 MW of electricity to support operations in the Jafurah gas field.

Everllence began an industrial-scale heat pump project to install the world’s largest steam heat pump at the Kendall Station facility in Cambridge, MA. The new system features a 35-MW thermal output capable of generating approximately 50 metric tons of steam/hour, serving over 70 million sq. ft. of building space. Expected to be operational in 2028, the system will use thermal energy from the Charles River and operate primarily with renewable electricity.

Concepts NREC recently unveiled an updated version of its Agile Engineering Design System: v2025.2. It adopts a new strategy for volute modeling with enhanced 3D modeling and tongue geometries, in addition to expanded leakage path capabilities in the 1D thermodynamic cycle calculation tool, CYCAL, via a secondary network solver. Also, the TurboOPT II product was improved to integrate fully with computational fluid dynamics solvers.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Shokubai obtained approval from Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization for their jointly proposed project: Development of Technologies for Building a Competitive Hydrogen Supply Chain.The project aims to build a hydrogen supply chain using ammonia as a carrier molecule, developing a medium-scale decentralized ammonia cracking technology near hydrogen demand sites.