Tuesday, 7 January, 2025 / Edition 40

For many of us, this week brings a welcome back to work and a continuation of that fraught relationship with our snooze button. Or maybe you are rearing to go already, fueled by a list of New Year’s resolutions and a full (in my case, decaf and instant) cup of coffee. If upping your tech training is on the list of “This year, I’m going to…” we will start this edition by pointing you to some cheap or free training options.

Sarah Compton

Editor, Enspired

Courses to Up Your Tech Game in 2025

Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com

AI and ML are here. You should dabble in learning how to use them, but some of you intrepid geos might want to dabble in learning how to program them.

Several companies, including chip giant Nvidia, have entire pages dedicated to online learning. Here’s a few that might interest geoscientists:

Course provider: Nvidia

• Accelerate Data Science Workflows with Zero Code Changes. This one gives your computation speed a boost by bringing your GPUs in on the fun (graphics processing units: their parallel structure makes them useful for no-graphic calculations involving parallel problems).

• Generative AI Explained. According to the website, after you take this course, you will have a basic understanding of Generative AI and be able to more effectively use the various tools built around it.

• Building LLM Applications with Prompt Engineering. Although not free, this course will help guide you to most effectively leveraging large language models in your work.

• Synthetic Data Generation for Training Computer Vision Models. I don’t see many geoscientists necessarily training computer vision models, but I do see a benefit for us to understand how and why synthetic data are generated for various AI and ML models.

Course provider: Microsoft

• Microsoft has several learning pathways, including this one for data analytics. Their pathways are free if you have a Microsoft login.

Course provider: IBM

• IBM also has several free courses relevant to geos.

• You can pay $99 to get a yearlong video learning subscription. I have not done that, so I can’t speak to it, but I’d love to hear from you if you do it!

• IBM has paired up with Coursera to launch courses and certificates on that platform, which I know from personal experience is a solid way to go for self-directed learning.

Of course (pun intended), many of these classes will focus on utilizing these companies’ specific products, but if you’re already using those products, these trainings can be extremely beneficial.

The bottom line: Tutorials are great, but they’re most effective when combined with a project or problem you’re trying to solve. Problem solving in the 21st century involves being able to effectively find resources to train yourself up.

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Making Seawater Hydrogen a Little Less Salty

Courtesy of Sinopec

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) completed the country’s first factory-based seawater hydrogen production research project at its Qingdao Refinery.

The innovation: This project allows coastal areas to utilize a method of renewable energy (green hydrogen production) AND offers a way for the company to use the high-salinity industrial seawater involved, which historically has posed environmental challenges in oil and gas operations and hydraulic fracturing.

How it works:

• Through electrolysis, seawater is split into hydrogen and oxygen.

• The produced hydrogen integrates into the Qingdao Refinery’s pipeline network for use in refining processes or hydrogen-powered vehicles.

• Where does the electricity for this come from? The project leverages part of the green electricity generated from Qingdao Refinery’s floating photovoltaic power station (cue the solar panels floating in sea water pictured above).

• It’s all done in a factory setting, with an eye for safety and efficiency.

Output: The project puts out about 20 cubic meters per hour of green hydrogen.

Pain points addressed:

• With 3 percent of its makeup being salt—not to mention other ions and impurities—the sea packs a corrosive punch.
• Sinopec Qingdao Refinery and the Dalian Institute of Petroleum and Petrochemicals have addressed the corrosion that typically poses challenges in these types of projects: The project uses chlorine-resistant electrode technology, high-performance electrode plates, and a seawater circulation system to help protect its equipment and design.

Just getting started: Sinopec is gearing up to really get going in green hydrogen production. The company has established 136 hydrogen refueling stations and built 11 hydrogen fuel supply centers.

Read the full press release here.

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