Rising to the salt extraction challenge

A salt extraction operation needed to move quickly from an onshore to an offshore website provided by 5 km of pipework. The firm turned to circulate management associate Celeros to help 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 introduced on-line ahead of schedule, preventing a potential halt in production when the existing onshore well developed points. Frisia Zout BV, part of K+S Minerals and Agriculture GmbH, was in a position 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 free to a 40,000-tonne storage facility for supply in bulk to business. เกจวัดแรงดัน1บาร์ is packed in smaller portions to be used in meals manufacturing or made into cubes for water purification.
The salt is extracted underneath 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 model new licence would solely permit 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 brand new pump building in 2017, and building started in April 2020 with the purpose of bringing it onstream earlier than the existing extraction licence expired at the finish of 2021. However, unexpected difficulties arose with the prevailing onshore well, which meant that manufacturing would cease sooner than anticipated. To bridge the hole, Frisia Zout BV started bringing in salt water by tanker, however this was an expensive various. As a outcome, it grew to become crucial to convey the new offshore nicely onstream as soon as attainable.
Time pressures weren’t the one challenges the corporate confronted. Due to the pure geology, the extraction route to the new offshore 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 the deepest wells on the earth and has 5 km of pipework past the water injection pumps. As a end result, the method water needs to be pumped in at high pressure (250 barg) and at a excessive move price (450 m3/h) to extract the quantity of salt required, making the selection of pumps crucial to success.
Total solution
Frisia Zout BV has a protracted and established relationship with Celeros FT through the ClydeUnion Pumps model, based mostly not only on the top quality of ITS OEM pumps but in addition on its capacity to respond quickly to any operational issues. The firm turned to its trusted circulate control partner once once more for help in assembly the distinctive circumstances encountered on the new salt nicely.
Celeros FT brand ClydeUnion Pumps assessed the move necessities for the water injection process on the new plant and verified that CUP-BB3 pumps could presumably be made to meet requirements. The pumps have been specified with Duplex stainless-steel casings as a outcome of they might be working in a salt-laden setting. Celeros FT manufactured, equipped, put in and commissioned the mission-critical pumps for injecting water into the brand new offshore salt cavern, assembly uncommon requirements for high 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 ensure it met the brand new duty necessities.
Jouk Riemer, challenge manager for Frisia Zout BV, explained: “We have used CUP-BB3 pumps up to now and located that their multistage centrifugal design gives better efficiency, compared to plunger pumps, for this utility. We needed to use them again for the new challenge. The Celeros FT staff responded to the challenges magnificently, utilizing their engineering expertise to identify the best resolution to fulfill the strain and move charges we required, delivering the pump skids to satisfy the new construction schedule and serving to us maintain the project on observe.”
Future assured
The new salt extraction plant got here online in December 2020. Its CUP-BB3 pumps meet the excessive pressure and flow rates required for the applying and may run in parallel, which has improved productiveness. The availability of a spare pump provides further confidence that manufacturing downtime might be minimal. The company’s ability to satisfy the accelerated project deadline is especially spectacular when you consider that the Covid-19 pandemic was already affecting provides of materials and components. The Celeros FT team labored exhausting to guarantee that this didn’t have any influence on their customer.
Celeros FT additionally provided specialist engineering expertise throughout the installation and commissioning part and can proceed to make sure the pumps operate satisfactorily throughout the plant’s 15-year lifespan, although the pump constructing could additionally be required to serve a couple of nicely in future as demand for K+S high purity salt continues to grow. Easy substitute of damage parts and ongoing service help from Celeros FT will make certain that the BB3 pumps continue to satisfy operational parameters throughout the extraction plant’s lifetime.
Riemer stated: “The mixture of high of the range OEM equipment and sensible engineering abilities supplied by Celeros Flow Technology was instrumental in delivering this project forward of time. I’m satisfied it would have taken lots longer to get what we required from another pump producer. The company’s responsiveness was essential in assembly our revised deadline, decreasing costs and preserving extraction at this website viable.” Riemer concluded: “This is the first offshore extraction nicely we’ve developed but it has been a largely optimistic experience thanks to Celeros Flow Technology. They introduced invaluable engineering experience and specialist pump information to this challenge and are a elementary part of its success.”
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