A salt extraction operation needed to move rapidly from an onshore to an offshore site provided by 5 km of pipework. The company turned to circulate control companion Celeros to help meet the distinctive circumstances encountered at the new salt well.
pressure gauge น้ำมัน of the two new water injection pumps for single and parallel operation, following installation and commissioning on the Frisia Zout BV web site.
A new salt extraction plant off the north coast of Holland has been brought on-line forward of schedule, stopping a potential halt in production when the prevailing onshore well developed points. Frisia Zout BV, part of K+S Minerals and Agriculture GmbH, was able to overcome the time and technical challenges of accelerating the challenge by working in partnership with Celeros Flow Technology (Celeros FT).
The bulk of the salt produced by Frisia Zout BV goes free to a 40,000-tonne storage facility for supply in bulk to industry. The the rest is packed in smaller quantities for use in meals manufacturing or made into cubes for water purification.
The salt is extracted beneath licence from the Dutch government. The current borehole licence
allowed K+S to extract salt from underground on the mainland. Due to regulatory modifications, the model new licence would solely permit extraction from subsea sources off the coast. Consequently, a new borehole and related plant was required on the Frisia Zout BV site.
New challenges
K+S started planning for a new pump constructing in 2017, and building started in April 2020 with the aim of bringing it onstream earlier than the prevailing extraction licence expired on the finish of 2021. However, unexpected difficulties arose with the prevailing onshore well, which meant that production would stop before anticipated. To bridge the gap, Frisia Zout BV began bringing in salt water by tanker, however this was an costly different. As a result, it turned crucial to bring the new offshore nicely onstream as soon as potential.
Time pressures were not the one challenges the company confronted. Due to the natural geology, the extraction route to the new offshore resource was not a straight bore: it changed direction twice earlier than reaching the salt deposits. In truth, the model new plant is fed by one of the deepest wells in the world and has 5 km of pipework past the water injection pumps. As a result, the method water has to be pumped in at excessive strain (250 barg) and at a high circulate price (450 m3/h) to extract the quantity of salt required, making the choice of pumps crucial to success.
Total resolution
Frisia Zout BV has a long and established relationship with Celeros FT by way of the ClydeUnion Pumps brand, based mostly not solely on the top quality of ITS OEM pumps but also on its capacity to reply quickly to any operational points. The firm turned to its trusted flow control companion once once more for assist in meeting the distinctive circumstances encountered at the new salt properly.
Celeros FT brand ClydeUnion Pumps assessed the move requirements for the water injection course of at the new plant and verified that CUP-BB3 pumps might be made to fulfill requirements. The pumps had been specified with Duplex stainless-steel casings as a outcome of they’d be operating in a salt-laden environment. Celeros FT manufactured, supplied, put in and commissioned the mission-critical pumps for injecting water into the new offshore salt cavern, meeting unusual necessities for high stress and high flow rates. In addition, they supported Frisia Zout BV in bringing an older pump again into service as a spare: assessing it and upgrading the casing to ensure it met the model new responsibility requirements.
Jouk Riemer, project supervisor for Frisia Zout BV, explained: “We have used CUP-BB3 pumps prior to now and found that their multistage centrifugal design provides better efficiency, in comparability with plunger pumps, for this software. We wanted to use them again for the new challenge. The Celeros FT staff responded to the challenges magnificently, utilizing their engineering expertise to establish one of the best solution to meet the pressure and move rates we required, delivering the pump skids to fulfill the model new building schedule and serving to us hold the project on monitor.”
Future assured
The new salt extraction plant got here online in December 2020. Its CUP-BB3 pumps meet the excessive strain and move rates required for the appliance and can run in parallel, which has improved productivity. The availability of a spare pump provides additional confidence that manufacturing downtime will be minimal. The company’s ability to satisfy the accelerated venture deadline is particularly spectacular when you assume about that the Covid-19 pandemic was already affecting supplies of materials and components. The Celeros FT team worked onerous to ensure that this did not have any influence on their buyer.
Celeros FT additionally supplied specialist engineering expertise all through the installation and commissioning part and can continue to make sure the pumps function satisfactorily all through the plant’s 15-year lifespan, although the pump building could additionally be required to serve a couple of properly in future as demand for K+S excessive purity salt continues to grow. Easy replacement of damage parts and ongoing service support from Celeros FT will ensure that the BB3 pumps proceed to satisfy operational parameters all through the extraction plant’s lifetime.
Riemer stated: “The combination of high quality OEM tools and practical engineering skills supplied by Celeros Flow Technology was instrumental in delivering this challenge ahead of time. I’m convinced it will have taken lots longer to get what we required from another pump manufacturer. The company’s responsiveness was essential in assembly our revised deadline, lowering costs and preserving extraction at this site viable.” Riemer concluded: “This is the primary offshore extraction nicely we’ve developed nevertheless it has been a largely constructive experience thanks to Celeros Flow Technology. They introduced invaluable engineering expertise and specialist pump information to this venture and are a basic a half of its success.”
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