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Jan Kristian Vasshus: Shaking up the shakers game
Vol. 234 No. 6
INNOVATIVE THINKERS
MELANIE CRUTHIRDS, NEWS EDITOR
Jan Kristian Vasshus
Shaking up the shakers game
When Cubility Chief Technology Officer Jan Kristian Vasshus was a teenager, he worked at a gas station, vacuuming interiors and cleaning cars. As an adult, looking to overcome complex on-site fluid treatment challenges, he thought, "Why not use the same technology?"
Nearly a decade ago, Vasshus and Cubility co-founder Trond Melhus were tasked with finding a solution to potential shaker problems aboard Rosneft's Ispolin drillship, which was built in Russia and planned for deployment to Kazakhstan. The Ispolin, built much like a Lego structure, was not engineered to handle the old style of mud shakers necessary to execute the project. Each of the ship's modules fit one on top of the other, and its shaker room was simply too small. Vasshus needed to come up with a way to increase the ship's filtration capacity,...