Rising to the salt extraction challenge

A salt extraction operation needed to transfer shortly from an onshore to an offshore website supplied by 5 km of pipework. The company turned to circulate management partner Celeros to assist meet the unique circumstances encountered at the new salt well.
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 introduced online forward of schedule, preventing a possible halt in manufacturing when the prevailing onshore well developed issues. Frisia Zout BV, a part of K+S Minerals and Agriculture GmbH, was in a position to overcome the time and technical challenges of accelerating the venture by working in partnership with Celeros Flow Technology (Celeros FT).
The bulk of the salt produced by Frisia Zout BV goes free to a forty,000-tonne storage facility for delivery in bulk to industry. The the rest is packed in smaller portions to be used in meals manufacturing 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 changes, the new licence would solely allow extraction from subsea sources off the coast. Consequently, a new borehole and related plant was required on the Frisia Zout BV web site.
New challenges
K+S began planning for a model new pump building in 2017, and development started in April 2020 with the goal of bringing it onstream before the prevailing extraction licence expired on the end of 2021. However, unforeseen difficulties arose with the present onshore properly, which meant that production would stop before anticipated. To bridge the hole, Frisia Zout BV started bringing in salt water by tanker, however this was an costly different. As a end result, it turned imperative to deliver the new offshore properly onstream as soon as possible.
Time pressures were not the only challenges the company faced. Due to the natural geology, the extraction route to the new offshore useful resource was not a straight bore: it modified direction twice before reaching the salt deposits. In fact, the brand 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 must be pumped in at high pressure (250 barg) and at a excessive circulate fee (450 m3/h) to extract the amount of salt required, making the choice of pumps important to success.
Total answer
Frisia Zout BV has an extended and established relationship with Celeros FT through the ClydeUnion Pumps model, based not solely on the top quality of ITS OEM pumps but also on its capability to respond quickly to any operational issues. The firm turned to its trusted flow management companion once once more for assist in assembly the unique circumstances encountered on the new salt properly.
Celeros FT brand ClydeUnion Pumps assessed the circulate 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 have been specified with Duplex stainless-steel casings as a outcome of they’d be operating in a salt-laden surroundings. Celeros FT manufactured, equipped, installed and commissioned the mission-critical pumps for injecting water into the model new offshore salt cavern, meeting uncommon necessities for prime pressure and excessive flow 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 brand new obligation requirements.
Jouk Riemer, venture manager for Frisia Zout BV, defined: “We have used CUP-BB3 pumps in the past and located that their multistage centrifugal design provides higher performance, compared to plunger pumps, for this software. We wanted to make use of them once more for the brand new venture. The Celeros FT staff responded to the challenges magnificently, using their engineering expertise to determine the most effective answer to meet the pressure and flow rates we required, delivering the pump skids to satisfy the model new construction schedule and serving to us hold the challenge on monitor.”
Future assured
The new salt extraction plant got here online in December 2020. Its CUP-BB3 pumps meet the high pressure and move charges required for the appliance and can run in parallel, which has improved productivity. The availability of a spare pump gives extra confidence that production downtime might be minimal. The company’s capability to satisfy the accelerated challenge deadline is especially spectacular when you think about that the Covid-19 pandemic was already affecting provides of materials and components. The Celeros FT staff worked hard to ensure that this did not have any impression on their buyer.
Celeros FT additionally offered specialist engineering expertise throughout the installation and commissioning section and will continue to ensure the pumps operate satisfactorily throughout the plant’s 15-year lifespan, although the pump building could also be required to serve more than one properly in future as demand for K+S high purity salt continues to grow. Easy alternative of wear and tear components and ongoing service help from Celeros FT will make certain that the BB3 pumps proceed to fulfill operational parameters all through the extraction plant’s lifetime.
Riemer mentioned: “The mixture of high quality OEM gear and sensible engineering abilities offered by Celeros Flow Technology was instrumental in delivering this venture forward of time. I’m convinced it might 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 maintaining extraction at this web site viable.” weksler pressure gauge ราคา concluded: “This is the first offshore extraction nicely we’ve developed nevertheless it has been a largely optimistic experience thanks to Celeros Flow Technology. They brought invaluable engineering experience and specialist pump data to this challenge and are a elementary part of its success.”
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