Following the successful performance of its LEO produced water treatment system on Maersk's Tyra Field in Denmark, Alfa Laval Oil Field has received a fresh order from YPF in Argentina. This is for a LEO system for dehydrating crude oil.
It was placed after a test programme was run on site, using crudes of varying characteristics. The results, according to marketing manager Lars Lundberg, were extremely encouraging.
A second system was recently purchased by Maersk, also for installation on Tyra. This is a 100 cu m/hr separator, the same capacity as the original unit supplied in 1993.
LEO (Light Equipment Offshore) is a compact, lightweight centrifugal separation system launched by Alfa Laval in 1993 for both the de-oiling of produced water and crude dehydration. Its first installation offshore was on Tyra.
The company now believes it has the separation technology to meet the most stringent demands which offshore operators are likely to face in the North Sea - or anywhere else, for that matter.
This could be of particular interest in the UK, which is felt to maintain unnecessarily lax standards compared with its neighbours Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway.
According to some sources, some 20 tons/day of oil is discharged into the sea in water which has been treated. The situation is attributed to an unwillingness on the part of operators to pay the higher cost of installing the equipment which offers the best performance in terms of cleaning contaminated water.
Meanwhile the equipment contractor continues to win orders in the UK. It recently notched up a second success with Amoco, delivering a produced water centrifuge package for the Inde 49/23-A platform in the Southern Gas Basin. The 15 cu m/hr system comprises a centrifuge system and automatically controlled duty/standby feed pumps.
Alfa Laval had previously supplied a 4 cu m/hr containerised centrifuge system for Amoco's Leman 49/27-A platform. These units can provide an efficiency equivalent to LEO on small packages, according to Lundberg.
In May Alfa Laval received an order for fresh water makers to Qatar General Petroleum Corp. This comprised five Vacuum Vapour Compression skid-mounted distillation units, type Desalt VVC 50, for offshore installation. They are self-contained, plug-in plants with a production capacity of 50 cu m/d.
For more information contact Lars Lundberg, Alfa Laval Oil Field: telephone 446 8 530 65000 or fax 446 8 530 60165.
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