Bently Nevada

The Baker Hughes facility in Minden, Nevada designs and manufactures Bently Nevada products.

Bently Nevada is an asset protection and condition monitoring hardware, software and service company for industrial plant-wide operations.[1] Its products are used to monitor the mechanical condition of rotating equipment in a wide variety of industries including oil and gas production, hydroelectric, wind, hydrocarbon processing, electric power generation, pulp and paper, mining, water and wastewater treatment. The company was founded in 1961 by Don Bently. Bently Nevada is headquartered in Minden, Nevada, about one hour south of Reno. Don Bently was the first to manufacture a commercially successful eddy-current proximity probe which measured vibration in high-speed turbomachinery by allowing the direct observation of the rotating shaft. The company also performed research in the field of rotordynamics, furthering knowledge of machinery malfunctions such as shaft cracks and fluid-induced instabilities. Its research also helped refine the equations used to describe vibratory behavior in rotordynamic systems.[2]

Bently Nevada was privately held until 2002 when it was acquired by General Electric and became part of GE Oil and Gas. In 2017 GE purchased Baker Hughes and merged this with the GE Oil and Gas division to form Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE). GE retained a 62.5% share of the merged company. In 2019, GE announced plans to reduce its ownership in Baker Hughes from 50.4% to 38.4% losing majority control.[3] In October, 2019, GE sold a portion of its 62.5% stake in BHGE, reducing its ownership below 50%, and BHGE was rechristened as Baker Hughes Company (NYSE:BKR).[4] Baker Hughes has positioned itself as an energy technology company.[5] Bently Nevada remained a Baker Hughes Business after GE's sale of its interest in the company. As of 2020, Baker Hughes Company has operations in over 120 countries.

Since the inception of the proximity probe, Bently Nevada has been a key company in the asset protection and condition monitoring market.[1] It has made key contributions to machine monitoring standards. As of 2018, it employed over 1,400 people worldwide, with facilities in nine countries, and had over four million sensors installed. With over a dozen different models of monitoring systems sold over more than 40 years, it has the largest installed base of permanently installed transducers and monitoring channels in the world.[6]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference uiowa was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Bently, Donald L.; Muszynska, Agnes (1985). "Rotor Internal Frictional Instability" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 April 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  3. ^ "GE begins divestment of Baker Hughes with $2.7 billion share sale". Reuters. 2019-09-12. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  4. ^ "GE closes Baker Hughes sale". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  5. ^ "Baker Hughes completes GE separation". Pipelines International. Archived from the original on 2020-09-02. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  6. ^ "Machinery Monitoring Systems Bently Nevada". www.bright-eng.com. Retrieved 9 February 2021.