April 2009 Vol. 236 No. 4

Projects

Bredero Shaw Provides Pipe Coating Protection For Deepwater Project

Bredero Shaw, a subsidiary of ShawCor Limited, was awarded the contract to produce 40 km of coated insulated pipeline for Sabah Shell Petroleum’s Gumusut-Kakap Deepwater Project.

The 18-inch pipe for the project is being protected with fusion bonded epoxy (FBE) and Bredero Shaw’s ThermoFlo D glass syntactic polyurethane insulation coating which is designed for water depths up to 1,200 meters. The project is located in the South China Sea some 120 km from the island of Sabah.

The large-scale project is being handled through Bredero Shaw’s facility in Kuantan, Malaysia which, with more than 600,000 square meters of plant and pipe storage area available, makes it the largest pipe-coating facility in the world.

To complete the Gumusut-Kakap coating project a special purpose Impact 300S metering unit has been supplied by the OMS Group and installed at the Kuantan facility. The machine has a total maximum output of 300 kg/min and features a special twin pump arrangement to enable syntactic formulations containing either polymer or glass microspheres to be processed without risk of damage to the delicate spheres. This is essential to ensure the required insulation and buoyancy properties of the finished pipe are maintained.

To ensure absolute precision of the molding process throughout the lengthy pouring cycle, the machine is fitted with mass flow meters and closed loop control of output and ratio to guarantee accurate control over mix quality. A special software program enables the start and end of pouring to be on a controlled ramp up/ramp down basis. thus helping the operator to build up and reduce delivery rates at the start and end of the molding process.

Materials are stored in temperature-controlled tanks fitted with a thermoregulation unit, automatic level controllers and agitators to ensure materials are processed at the correct temperature.