We were challenged with increasing the size of these silos from 100 tonnes capacity to 450 tonnes.
Halliburton AS, a global leader in the provision of services and products to the energy industry related to the exploration, development, and production of oil and natural gas constantly face challenges as they strive to service their customers in remote and hostile environments.
To service these customers Halliburton use pressured cement silos for the storage and transport of specialist cements used in the drilling of oils and gas wells.
Pressured silos differ from the more commonly used vented silos in that the silos is pressured during the filling and emptying process. The silos must comply with PD 5500 "Specification for unfired, fusion welded pressure vessels" the code of practice that provides rules for the design, fabrication, and inspection of pressure vessels.
We were challenged with increasing the size of these silos from 100 tonnes capacity to 450 tonnes.
We had three challenges to meet and overcome:
1. the technical and performance requirements of these silos
2. the practical limitations in transporting and locating the silos
3. the operational requirements, in the challenging environments they work in, ease of operation was critical
Cookson and Zinn's engineers worked closely with Halliburton's technical team to design a solution that met the performance requirements of PD55000 and delivered the performance required by their customers.
The practical limitations including transport (mainly limited by the road system bridge heights) and handling were considered closely and incorporated into the design of the silos. This was quite a challenge when considering the silos were now 4 time larger than previously supplied.
During our design phase and ensuring we listen to our customers needs we were further challenged with removing the difficult and time consuming activity of digging our cement blockages in the manway neck.
Working closely with all stakeholders, calling on our design experience and using our modelling software we developed a patented pressure equalisation system which eliminated the problem.
An order for 22 silos incorporating cement fluidisation and load cells was secured and shipped to Stavanger, Norway .
Silos similar to these can also be seen in Aberdeen and Peterhead
