Information Manager Sverre Kojedal received the Einar Brendeng Technology Prize on behalf of Statoil's Snøhvit Project.
Photo: Thor Nielsen
In connection with Technoport festival in Trondheim, NTNU and SINTEF have founded an award to honour advanced technology that has been adopted by industry.
The institutions have decided to name the award after Professor Emeritus Einar Brendeng, who is now eighty years old and is still at work every day.
Brendeng began his long career in research and teaching in 1952 at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and he played a central role in building up the Institute’s Department of Refrigeration Engineering. In the 70s, he started work on insulation systems for vessels, paving the way for the first LNG vessels for liquid natural gas transportation.
In the 80s, on behalf of Statoil, Brendeng developed technology for liquifying natural gas by refrigeration, technology which would prove to be of decisive importance for the future Snøhvit project.
Without Brendeng’s lifelong efforts to bring forth new knowledge, academic candidates, working tools and relevant industrial contacts, the technology adopted by Statoil for the Snøhvit development would not have been possible.
Without Brendeng’s lifelong efforts to bring forth new knowledge, academic candidates, working tools and relevant industrial contacts, the technology adopted by Statoil for the Snøhvit development would not have been possible.
NTNU and SINTEF are therefore proud to make the first award of the Einar Brendeng Technology Prize to the Snøhvit project.
The prize takes the form of a work of art by Cathrine Maske.
The prize-winner:
Natural gas is the most rapidly growing energy market in the world. For Statoil, the Snøhvit project is the door-opener to this market.
In 2007, the Hammerfest LNG gas processing plant on the island of Melkøya will come into operation. Huge quantities of natural gas from subsea reservoirs will be brought ashore via the world’s longest gas pipeline.
On Melkøya, the gas will be liquified before it is carried around the world by ship. The plant will be the first of its kind in Europe and the most northerly in the world. The development project has a price tag of NOK 58 billion and is the largest industrial development project ever undertaken in northern Norway.
In the Snøhvit development project, Statoil has taken the chance of adopting Brendeng’s concept, rather than going in for safe American technology, which would have made the project simpler, but more expensive.
