Project Name :

Reliability Improvement of the Pumping System in NBU Production Platform

Project Description :
Oil spill pollution case had occurred several times in our North Area production platform. Paragraph below will try to explain shortly the relationship between NBU Production Platform and oil spill as the consequences of our operation. Most of NBU major production platform has process facilities to separate oil from water. This oil processing system requires continues operation of pumping system which is a part of process facilities. Failure of this pumping system will lead to failure of process facilities to recycle back oil to system. The direct consequence is oil spill to seawater and shut down of processing system will be the best next choice to handle the critical situation. Focusing on the pumping system, one of the root causes of system failure is functional failure of control valve that serves to control fluid flow discharge of the pump. This failure will lead to unbalance fluid level in reject tank so that the pumping system can run continuously. If the fluid level in reject tank is over its capacity, than the oil spill event occurs. Our proposed project aims to ensure reliability of the pumping system in oil processing system of NBU production platform.

Project Objective:
Our proposed project aims to ensure reliability of the pumping system in oil processing system of North production platform. How we can achieve that? We propose some modification of pumping system which intends to ensure the pumping system will be reliable to support processing system. This can be done by eliminating the control valve and replace with Pump Control System.

Illustration of current pumping system

Currently, our flow control system (control valve) works by controlling and throttling how much fluid accordance with the fluid flow required by system. In the other hand, our proposed Pump Control System will handle fluid control by controlling the pump speed and drive motor accordance with the fluid flow required by system.

Illustration of proposed pumping system

Pump Control System (Variable Speed Drive/VSD) may offer some benefits: 1. Improved Process Control By matching pump output flow or pressure directly to the process requirements, small variations can be corrected more rapidly by a VSD than by other control forms, which improves process performance. There is less likelihood of flow or pressure surges when the control device provides rates of change, which are virtually infinitely variable. 2. Improved System Reliability Any reduction in speed achieved by using a VSD has major benefits in reducing pump wear, particularly in bearings and seals. Furthermore, by using reliability indices, the additional time periods between maintenance or breakdowns can be accurately computed. 3. Energy Savings With pump control installations, energy savings of between 30% and 50% have been achieved in many installations by installing VSDs. Project Target: Related with the benefits that offered by applying Pump Control System, the target are: 1. No oil spill pollution occurred from pump system failure. (QHSE) 2. Increase MTBF (Mean Time between Failures) of pump unit. (Operation) 3. Reduces maintenance cost of pump system. No maintenance cost for control valve. (Cost Effectiveness) Resources Needed:

We have searched all the information mainly from the internet and official website of some manufacturer of the Pump Control System. To ensure successful installation of this project, we need to invite 3rd party from manufacturer to offer their suitable and best system in accordance to our operation. This project also will be cooperation project between Production, Mechanical and Electrical section of NBU Operation. Budget: Approx USD 25,000 (engineering estimate) Project Timeline : 3 months preparation 2 months installation Continues monitoring External Resources: Flowserve as manufacturer of Intelligence Process Solution system.