A salt extraction operation had to transfer shortly from an onshore to an offshore web site provided by 5 km of pipework. The firm turned to flow management partner Celeros to assist meet the unique circumstances encountered at the new salt nicely.
Overview 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, preventing a potential halt in manufacturing when the prevailing onshore well developed issues. 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).
เกจวัดแรงดันคือ of the salt produced by Frisia Zout BV goes unfastened to a 40,000-tonne storage facility for supply in bulk to trade. The remainder is packed in smaller portions to be used in food production or made into cubes for water purification.
The salt is extracted underneath licence from the Dutch government. The present borehole licence
allowed K+S to extract salt from underground on the mainland. Due to regulatory changes, the new licence would solely allow extraction from subsea sources off the coast. Consequently, a brand new borehole and associated plant was required at the Frisia Zout BV website.
New challenges
K+S began planning for a new pump constructing in 2017, and construction started in April 2020 with the goal of bringing it onstream earlier than the present extraction licence expired on the finish of 2021. However, unexpected difficulties arose with the present onshore nicely, which meant that manufacturing would stop ahead of anticipated. To bridge the gap, Frisia Zout BV started bringing in salt water by tanker, however this was an expensive various. As a outcome, it turned crucial to deliver the new offshore well onstream as quickly as attainable.
Time pressures weren’t the only challenges the company confronted. Due to the pure geology, the extraction path to the new offshore useful resource was not a straight bore: it modified course twice earlier than reaching the salt deposits. In fact, the new plant is fed by one of many deepest wells on the earth and has 5 km of pipework past the water injection pumps. As a result, the process water must be pumped in at excessive stress (250 barg) and at a high circulate price (450 m3/h) to extract the amount of salt required, making the selection of pumps critical to success.
Total answer
Frisia Zout BV has an extended and established relationship with Celeros FT via the ClydeUnion Pumps brand, based not only on the prime quality of ITS OEM pumps but additionally on its capability to reply quickly to any operational issues. The firm turned to its trusted flow management partner once once more for assist in assembly the unique circumstances encountered at the new salt properly.
Celeros FT model ClydeUnion Pumps assessed the circulate requirements for the water injection process at the new plant and verified that CUP-BB3 pumps could possibly be made to satisfy necessities. The pumps had been specified with Duplex stainless-steel casings because they might be operating in a salt-laden environment. Celeros FT manufactured, equipped, put in and commissioned the mission-critical pumps for injecting water into the new offshore salt cavern, assembly uncommon necessities for top pressure and excessive circulate rates. In addition, they supported Frisia Zout BV in bringing an older pump back into service as a spare: assessing it and upgrading the casing to ensure it met the new responsibility requirements.
Jouk Riemer, venture supervisor for Frisia Zout BV, defined: “We have used CUP-BB3 pumps prior to now and found that their multistage centrifugal design gives higher performance, compared to plunger pumps, for this utility. We wanted to make use of them once more for the model new challenge. The Celeros FT staff responded to the challenges magnificently, utilizing their engineering experience to establish the best answer to fulfill the stress and flow charges we required, delivering the pump skids to fulfill the new building schedule and helping us maintain the challenge on track.”
Future assured
The new salt extraction plant came online in December 2020. Its CUP-BB3 pumps meet the excessive pressure and flow charges required for the appliance and may run in parallel, which has improved productivity. The availability of a spare pump offers additional confidence that manufacturing downtime will be minimal. The company’s capacity to fulfill the accelerated challenge deadline is especially impressive when you consider that the Covid-19 pandemic was already affecting provides of materials and components. The Celeros FT staff worked onerous to ensure that this didn’t have any impact on their buyer.
Celeros FT additionally offered specialist engineering experience all through the set up and commissioning section and will proceed to ensure the pumps operate satisfactorily throughout the plant’s 15-year lifespan, though the pump building may be required to serve multiple well in future as demand for K+S excessive purity salt continues to develop. Easy alternative of wear and tear elements and ongoing service assist from Celeros FT will be certain that the BB3 pumps proceed to fulfill operational parameters throughout the extraction plant’s lifetime.
Riemer stated: “The mixture of high quality OEM equipment and sensible engineering skills provided by Celeros Flow Technology was instrumental in delivering this venture ahead of time. I’m satisfied it will have taken so much longer to get what we required from one other pump producer. The company’s responsiveness was essential in assembly our revised deadline, decreasing costs and preserving extraction at this site viable.” Riemer concluded: “This is the primary offshore extraction properly we now have developed however it has been a largely positive experience due to Celeros Flow Technology. They brought invaluable engineering experience and specialist pump information to this challenge and are a fundamental part of its success.”
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