Offshore staff
GROOT-AMMERS, the Netherlands – Paradigm Flow Services (PFS) has issued an update on its cleaning campaign for Total on the Elgin platform in the UK central North Sea.
The brief was to clean 28 cooling units, some of which were causing overheating issues.
Hugh MacKenzie, technical director at PFS, said: “We had a chemical treatment spread ready to deploy immediately…backed up by an experienced offshore team. We acted fast and so far, we’ve cleaned 18 units in a thee-week trip.
“We plan to finish the remaining 10 during phase two of the project. We work to minimize shut down time of the units, often only needing to shut them down individually for 6-12 hr depending on the debris build up.
“Because the HVAC units use seawater as a cooling mechanism, the marine growth reduces efficiency or in some cases, ceases the units’ heat transfer capability altogether when there is a substantial build-up. This problem can cause real issues when you consider the electrical switchgear, communications and computer equipment it needs to cool, not to mention the units used for the comfort of people on the platforms.”
08/02/2019
