Akselos and UPTEC Solutions partner to bring Structural Performance Management to petrochemical operators in Brazil, starting with a defined set of critical equipment.
Akselos and UPTEC Solutions have signed a partnership to deploy Structural Performance Management (SPM) with petrochemical operators in Latin America, starting with a defined set of critical equipment in Brazil. SPM continuously calculates the real structural limits of that equipment from live operating data. The practical effect is that a limit becomes a number an engineer can act on, rather than a conservative assumption carried between inspections. It is the first partnership of its kind in the region.
What the partnership covers
Akselos builds and runs the structural models. UPTEC brings them to Brazilian operators and supports them on site, which is the half of any industrial deployment that decides whether it lasts. UPTEC’s business is finding distinctive technology in other markets and making it work against local conditions and local regulators, and that is why this is a partnership rather than a direct sale. The initial scope is bounded to a specific equipment set, with room to widen as models prove out.
Why this matters now in petrochemicals
Margins are volatile, feedstock economics move, and new capacity takes years and capital that boards are reluctant to commit. The output available in the near term is sitting in equipment that already exists. Getting at it safely means knowing where the real structural limit is, which is the one thing process instrumentation has never shown. Sites can see temperature, pressure and flow continuously. They cannot see how the steel is responding, so they run to an assumption. Assumptions in this domain are always conservative, and conservative costs throughput.
What can an operator actually do differently?
Decide how hard to run a unit, when to intervene, and whether a replacement really has to happen this turnaround. Those three decisions currently get made on periodic study data; SPM makes them on current data.
The closest proven analog sits in refining, on a different asset class: at PAE’s delayed coker, continuous structural analysis showed 2.2% of operating cycles were causing 83% of the accumulated drum damage, under API 579-1. Not every cycle costs the same. Until analysis runs at operating speed, no one can tell which ones do. That is the capability going to work in Brazil, applied to petrochemical equipment.
A pattern we see in practice
When a site moves from assumed limits to calculated ones, the binding constraint is almost never where the team expected. Engineers arrive with a vessel in mind and the calculation points at a nozzle, a support, or one transient in the start-up sequence. The equipment was rarely the problem. A handful of operating events was. It changes what a deployment should look at first.
What comes next
SPM is proven in production today on coke drums, hydrotreater and hydrocracker reactors, SMR pigtails and catalyst tubes, FPSOs and LNG open rack vaporizers. Petrochemical equipment is where this partnership extends that work, asset class by asset class, with validation ahead of any claim. Operators in the region who want to know where their own number sits can start with the scope UPTEC and Akselos have already defined.
“Our technology runs full structural models of an asset in minutes rather than days, helping engineers see how real operating conditions are affecting the steel while the plant is running.” — Ricardo Pinto, VP Sales LATAM, Akselos
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Ricardo works with energy operators across Latin America, and Europe to connect structural integrity priorities with broader business outcomes. He helps organizations identify where structural clarity can unlock longer asset life, reduced uncertainty, and stronger operational performance.