Rising to the salt extraction challenge

A salt extraction operation needed to transfer rapidly from an onshore to an offshore site provided by 5 km of pipework. The company turned to move control companion Celeros to help meet the distinctive circumstances encountered at the new salt well.
Overview of the 2 new water injection pumps for single and parallel operation, following set up and commissioning at the Frisia Zout BV website.
A new salt extraction plant off the north coast of Holland has been brought online forward of schedule, preventing a potential halt in production when the present onshore properly 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 project by working in partnership with Celeros Flow Technology (Celeros FT).
The bulk of the salt produced by Frisia Zout BV goes unfastened to a forty,000-tonne storage facility for delivery in bulk to industry. The remainder is packed in smaller quantities to be used in meals production or made into cubes for water purification.
The salt is extracted beneath licence from the Dutch authorities. The existing borehole licence

allowed K+S to extract salt from underground on the mainland. Due to regulatory modifications, the new licence would solely allow extraction from subsea sources off the coast. Consequently, a model new borehole and associated plant was required on the Frisia Zout BV web site.
New challenges

K+S started planning for a new pump building in 2017, and development began in April 2020 with the aim of bringing it onstream before the existing extraction licence expired at the end of 2021. However, unforeseen difficulties arose with the existing onshore nicely, which meant that manufacturing would cease sooner than anticipated. To bridge the gap, Frisia Zout BV began bringing in salt water by tanker, however this was an costly various. As a end result, it grew to become crucial to deliver the brand new offshore nicely onstream as quickly as potential.
Time pressures weren’t the one challenges the corporate confronted. Due to the natural geology, the extraction path to the new offshore useful resource was not a straight bore: it changed path twice before reaching the salt deposits. In truth, the new plant is fed by one of many deepest wells in the world and has 5 km of pipework beyond the water injection pumps. As a outcome, the method water has to be pumped in at excessive strain (250 barg) and at a excessive move rate (450 m3/h) to extract the amount of salt required, making the choice of pumps crucial to success.
Total answer

Frisia Zout BV has a protracted and established relationship with Celeros FT by way of the ClydeUnion Pumps brand, based mostly not only on the top quality of ITS OEM pumps but also on its capacity to reply quickly to any operational issues. The company turned to its trusted move control companion once again for assist in meeting the unique circumstances encountered on the new salt nicely.
Celeros FT brand ClydeUnion Pumps assessed the flow requirements for the water injection course of at the new plant and verified that CUP-BB3 pumps might be made to satisfy requirements. The pumps had been specified with Duplex stainless-steel casings as a end result of they might be working in a salt-laden setting. Celeros FT manufactured, equipped, installed and commissioned the mission-critical pumps for injecting water into the new offshore salt cavern, meeting unusual requirements for prime strain and excessive move 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 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 gives better performance, compared to plunger pumps, for this utility. We wished to use them again for the model new project. เกจวัดแรงดันเครื่องกรองน้ำ responded to the challenges magnificently, using their engineering expertise to identify the best resolution to meet the pressure and move charges we required, delivering the pump skids to fulfill the 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 excessive pressure and circulate rates required for the application and may run in parallel, which has improved productivity. The availability of a spare pump offers additional confidence that manufacturing downtime might be minimal. The company’s ability to meet the accelerated venture deadline is particularly spectacular when you think about that the Covid-19 pandemic was already affecting supplies of materials and parts. The Celeros FT team labored onerous to guarantee that this didn’t have any impression on their buyer.
Celeros FT also supplied specialist engineering experience all through the installation and commissioning phase and can continue to make sure the pumps function satisfactorily throughout the plant’s 15-year lifespan, though the pump building may be required to serve a couple of properly in future as demand for K+S high purity salt continues to grow. Easy substitute of wear elements and ongoing service assist from Celeros FT will be certain that the BB3 pumps continue to fulfill operational parameters throughout the extraction plant’s lifetime.
Riemer stated: “The mixture of high quality OEM equipment and practical engineering expertise supplied by Celeros Flow Technology was instrumental in delivering this venture forward of time. I’m satisfied it might have taken so much longer to get what we required from one other pump manufacturer. The company’s responsiveness was essential in meeting our revised deadline, reducing prices and maintaining extraction at this web site viable.” Riemer concluded: “This is the first offshore extraction nicely we’ve developed however it has been a largely positive experience thanks to Celeros Flow Technology. They brought invaluable engineering experience and specialist pump data to this venture and are a fundamental a part of its success.”

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