A salt extraction operation needed to move shortly from an onshore to an offshore site equipped by 5 km of pipework. The company turned to circulate control partner Celeros to assist meet the unique circumstances encountered at the new salt properly.
Overview of the 2 new water injection pumps for single and parallel operation, following installation and commissioning at the Frisia Zout BV website.
A new salt extraction plant off the north coast of Holland has been brought on-line ahead of schedule, preventing a possible halt in manufacturing when the prevailing onshore well developed points. Frisia Zout BV, a part of K+S Minerals and Agriculture GmbH, was capable of overcome the time and technical challenges of accelerating the project by working in partnership with Celeros Flow Technology (Celeros FT).
The bulk of the salt produced by Frisia Zout BV goes loose to a forty,000-tonne storage facility for delivery in bulk to industry. The the rest is packed in smaller portions for use in food production or made into cubes for water purification.
The salt is extracted under licence from the Dutch government. The current borehole licence
allowed K+S to extract salt from underground on the mainland. Due to regulatory adjustments, the new licence would only permit extraction from subsea sources off the coast. Consequently, a new borehole and associated plant was required at the Frisia Zout BV website.
New challenges
K+S started planning for a model new pump building in 2017, and development began in April 2020 with the aim of bringing it onstream earlier than the present extraction licence expired on the finish of 2021. However, unexpected difficulties arose with the existing onshore properly, which meant that production would cease ahead of anticipated. To bridge the hole, Frisia Zout BV started bringing in salt water by tanker, but this was an costly alternative. As a result, it turned crucial to convey the model new offshore properly onstream as quickly as possible.
Time pressures were not the only challenges the corporate faced. Due to the pure geology, the extraction route to the new offshore useful resource was not a straight bore: it changed direction twice earlier than reaching the salt deposits. In reality, the brand new plant is fed by one of many deepest wells in the world and has 5 km of pipework past the water injection pumps. As a result, the process water must be pumped in at high stress (250 barg) and at a high move rate (450 m3/h) to extract the quantity of salt required, making the selection of pumps crucial to success.
Total solution
Frisia Zout BV has an extended and established relationship with Celeros FT via the ClydeUnion Pumps model, based not only on the prime quality of ITS OEM pumps but additionally on its capability to reply quickly to any operational points. Shh! turned to its trusted circulate control companion once once more for assist in meeting the unique circumstances encountered on the new salt nicely.
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 be made to fulfill necessities. The pumps had been specified with Duplex stainless-steel casings as a result of they would be working in a salt-laden surroundings. Celeros FT manufactured, provided, put in and commissioned the mission-critical pumps for injecting water into the new offshore salt cavern, assembly unusual necessities for prime pressure and high flow charges. 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 make sure it met the brand new obligation necessities.
Jouk Riemer, project manager for Frisia Zout BV, defined: “We have used CUP-BB3 pumps prior to now and found that their multistage centrifugal design gives better performance, in comparison with plunger pumps, for this utility. We wanted to use them once more for the new challenge. The Celeros FT staff responded to the challenges magnificently, utilizing their engineering expertise to establish one of the best answer to fulfill the stress and circulate rates we required, delivering the pump skids to meet the model new construction schedule and helping us hold the project on monitor.”
Future assured
The new salt extraction plant got here on-line in December 2020. Its CUP-BB3 pumps meet the high stress and move rates required for the applying and might run in parallel, which has improved productivity. The availability of a spare pump offers additional confidence that production downtime might be minimal. The company’s capacity to satisfy the accelerated venture deadline is particularly impressive when you assume about that the Covid-19 pandemic was already affecting supplies of supplies and elements. The Celeros FT team labored exhausting to guarantee that this did not have any impact on their buyer.
Celeros FT additionally provided specialist engineering expertise all through the set up and commissioning section and will continue to ensure the pumps function satisfactorily throughout the plant’s 15-year lifespan, although the pump building may be required to serve more than one well in future as demand for K+S excessive purity salt continues to grow. Easy alternative of damage parts and ongoing service support from Celeros FT will ensure that the BB3 pumps proceed to fulfill operational parameters all through the extraction plant’s lifetime.
Riemer mentioned: “The mixture of high quality OEM tools and sensible engineering expertise supplied by Celeros Flow Technology was instrumental in delivering this project forward of time. I’m satisfied it will have taken lots longer to get what we required from another pump producer. The company’s responsiveness was crucial in meeting our revised deadline, decreasing prices and maintaining extraction at this web site viable.” Riemer concluded: “This is the primary offshore extraction properly we now have developed nevertheless it has been a largely constructive experience thanks to Celeros Flow Technology. They brought invaluable engineering experience and specialist pump knowledge to this project and are a basic a part of its success.”
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