Offshore staff
WOODBRIDGE, UK – Amarinth has delivered API 610 overhung high pressure, high flow, low-shear duplex pumps to Fjords Processing for produced water treatment on Premier’s UK North Sea Catcher field FPSO.
Catcher, 180 km (112 mi) east of Aberdeen, is due to come onstream next year and will produce 96 MMbbl of oil with a peak production rate of around 50,000 b/d.
Japan’s IHI is building the FPSO hull: on delivery, this will be integrated with the topsides in Singapore.
The produced water treatment plants that Fjords Processing is supplying required pumps with an 80-m (262-ft) head and a high flow rate of 920 cu m/hr (32,489 cf/hr). According to Amarinth, this necessitated impeller sizes of more than 0.5 m (1.65 ft).
Systems this size are usually costly to manufacture, and are typically located between bearing pumps. However, Amarinth selected a more cost-effective overhung design to fulfil the required tasks.
The company says its solution ensured that the pumps were well-balanced with tight concentricity tolerances, maintaining vibration within the API 610 project specifications and noise levels below 85 dB(A). Most of the pumps were also supplied with dual seals and Plan 53B seal support systems.
In addition, the pumps needed low-shear properties so that the produced water treatment plants could separate and capture oil from the water before returning the cleaned water to the sea.
For produced water treatment plants to work efficiently, mixing of oil and water being pumped must be minimized, preventing restructuring and emulsification during the transfer of the fluid through the separation system.
05/12/2016
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