Charm Industrial is dedicated to removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. Accomplishing that goal will require Charm to sequester gigatons of CO2 annually.
To conduct its work, Charm will operate tens of thousands of pyrolyzer systems 24/7. These systems will perform various jobs, including preparing and pyrolyzing biomass, handling the char produced from pyrolysis, separating oil, and managing cleanup and emissions. Each system includes sensors that measure critical data – such as temperature and pressure – to ensure Charm does not exceed safety thresholds. Charm needs to monitor all that data in real time with minimal human interaction.
“When you have tens of thousands of systems, you can’t have operators at every single site,” says Edward Young, Head of Software and Electronics and Staff Scientist at Charm Industrial. “As we scale our business, we’ll need to simultaneously monitor numerous systems in real time remotely.”
Originally, data analysis at Charm was a long and ineffective process. Only two engineers had the Python skills to scrape through huge comma-separated values (CSV) files of their systems’ data and build a live plot functionality, but this manual process took many days and the resulting plot couldn’t display time series correctly. As the company grew, it needed a faster and more effective way to collect, monitor, and understand critical data.
“ When you have tens of thousands of systems, you can’t have operators at every single site. As we scale our business, we’ll need to simultaneously monitor numerous systems in real time remotely.”
Edward Young
Head of Software and Electronics and Staff Scientist, Charm Industrial
Democratizing Instant Data Visualization and Insights
Today, the Charm team uses Datadog’s Infrastructure Monitoring solution as its primary systems monitoring interface to provide data visualization and instant metrics and alerts across Charm’s systems to all stakeholders.
Young and his team use Python to aggregate raw data from Charm’s sensors and send it to Datadog as custom metrics, which are then displayed in real time across the company and the globe via dashboards. Young was immediately impressed with how quickly he could visualize the data and glean insights using Datadog’s intuitive dashboards with drag and drop functionality.
“The learning curve for Datadog was very short and our entire team can now conduct data analysis, even those who don’t know how to write code,” says Young. “That’s amazing.”
In the past, only the two software engineers could understand and analyze the data the company collected. Tests would also typically occur late in the evening, so meetings to discuss the results would be delayed since there was no quick way to visualize and analyze the data on the spot.
“ The learning curve for Datadog was very short and our entire team can now conduct data analysis, even those who don’t know how to write code. That’s amazing.”
Edward Young
Head of Software and Electronics and Staff Scientist, Charm Industrial
Today, the entire technical team of about 30 people has access to system data—including temperature, pressure, flow, and gas composition—through custom-built dashboards that enable them to conduct continuous active monitoring of the systems and alert the appropriate teams to potential problems. This instant access to critical data reduced analysis time from two to three days to just hours, allowing the team to easily identify trends and gather deep insights into how systems are performing. As a result, Charm can now hold meetings the same night as testing.
“Datadog helps everyone understand what’s going on as we scale our equipment,” says Young. “It’s a really useful tool that we love.”
Given that the company is young and breaking new ground with its approach to removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it’s subject to close public scrutiny. Remote, real-time monitoring of data trends helps Charm keep closer tabs on machine safety and immediately make necessary corrections.
“We’re operating something that’s very hot and at pressure,” says Young. “With Datadog, we can instantly see when temperature and pressure in our equipment is trending in a problematic direction and then swiftly take action.”
For example, the pressure gauge on an oil condenser system recently slowly rose over the course of a month. Using dashboards to plot the change alerted Charm engineers to investigate, and they were able to zoom into specific time periods and conduct side-by-side comparisons with previous tests to identify any large deviations from past results. Examining trends through this historical analysis revealed that the system had unexpected material buildup, which prompted the engineers to alert the rest of the team to discuss results and implement new maintenance procedures.
“It would have fully clogged eventually and broken the system, but our dashboards caught it early, and the pressure came down,” says Young. “More proactive problem solving meant it didn’t result in any mechanical failure.”
Constant monitoring prevents equipment damage, which can be costly and cause delays. Using Datadog to track critical metrics, like how much biomass goes in and how much bio-oil goes out, allows Charm to better understand the efficiency of its system and where it can be optimized.
“Engineers can’t watch the system constantly because they have other jobs to do,” explains Young. “But now if something happens, they can immediately find and resolve the problem before it becomes a safety concern. They had no way to see temperature and pressure trends before.”
Charm is now beginning to use alerts as well. In particular, they want to push alerts when the system powers on, which will easily alert everyone in the building that the system is powered and to proceed with caution.
In 2021, Charm permanently sequestered more carbon than any other business worldwide. But the company is still a long way from achieving its goals. Charm eventually plans to run tens of thousands of pyrolyzers globally to sequester gigatons of carbon annually and reduce the effects of global warming and climate change. Using Datadog will help Charm achieve the reliability, uptime, and scale it needs to operate those systems 24/7.
“Datadog is one of the most powerful tools we have in our tech stack,” adds Young. “It’s a game changer.”
