Offshore staff
PERTH, Australia — Woodside Energy has co-developed an offshore caisson cleaning and inspection tool (CCAIT) system.
The system, which provides remote inspections, was designed and deployed in less than 12 months under a collaboration with Nexxis, Monadelphous, WOMA and Fugro.
It incorporates a human-sized robot that can inspect the inside of caissons, vertical carbon steel pipes up to 70 m long and up to 1.2 m wide. These structures house equipment such as firewater and seawater lift pumps.
The CCAIT system is controlled remotely by technicians from a safe location on a platform. The tool is lowered into the caisson via a tether and winch arrangement, with wheels extended to centralize the tool within the caisson, and probe arms extended to enable ultrasound inspection.
High-definition cameras stream video back to the technicians, with the asset team using the data for forward planning purposes.
“The CCAIT system removes the costs of mobilizing tools from international locations, including the cost of delay in fractured supply chains. These can represent up to 50% of the total cost of an inspection campaign," Daniel Kalms, Woodside executive vice president of technical services, said. “The project team was made up of people from local companies who came together and designed, procured, fabricated, tested and validated a robotic solution during the height of a pandemic in under a year.”
06.14.2022
