A Basic But Helpful Guide On

Framo System
Written by Capt Rajeev Jassal on March 27, 2017

I recently met a 3rd officer. I had a conversation with him about

less number of jobs these days for junior officers.

He told me how he got the job just after clearing his exams while
his friends were still waiting.

You might ask what edge he had over his friends !!!

Well, he had worked on ships (tankers) with Framo pumps.

I was like.. what ?? Now Framo system helping to get the jobs
on ships.
 Few seconds later when I got my breath back, I realised how
Framo has captured the tanker market.

Truth be told, Submersible pumps are the present and future of

the tanker industry.

This makes the knowledge of Submersible pumps and Framo

system so much important. This post is about the basics of the
Framo pump so lets start with that.

How a centrifugal pump works ?

Framo submersible pumps are centrifugal pumps. So before we

discuss Framo pumps, we must know how a centrifugal pump
works ?
And this video might help in understanding of how a centrifugal
pump works.

I am not going in details of how a centrifugal pump works. But if

you watch the above video, you would know that it has three
main components

Impeller

Volute casing surrounding impeller, and

A prime mover (source of energy) to move the impeller

Prime mover provides the energy for the impeller to rotate.
Impeller rotates and pushes the liquid into the volute casing.
Volute casing has a spiral structure. It has narrow opening at the
entry of liquid and the size of opening increases along the
passage of liquid.

This means that as the liquid travels in the volute casing, velocity
reduces and pressure increases. This is as per Bernoillis Theorum.

This is the most basic points we should know before we proceed

with any kind of centrifugal pump.

Components of FRAMO system

 As with all centrifugal pumps, Framo pump also have

Impeller

Volute casing

But apart from being a centrifugal pump, FRAMO is also a

submersible pump. That is the pump is fitted inside the cargo
tank and will be submerged in the liquid (cargo).

Keeping this in mind, let us discuss the components of FRAMO

system to better understand this.

1. Hydraulic Motor

For the centrifugal pump to work, impeller need to rotate. But

impeller would not rotate on its own. It need a source of energy
(prime mover).

In steam turbine centrifugal pumps, this energy is provided by

steam. For electric pumps, electric motor provides this energy for
rotating the impeller.

In FRAMO system, this energy is provided by the Hydraulic motor

using the pressurised hydraulic oil.
How ? Well we all have read the below law of conservation of
energy. Havent we ?

Energy can neither be created not destroyed. It can only be

converted from one form to another
Hydraulic motor converts pressure energy of high hydraulic oil
pressure to rotational energy to rotate the impeller.

Below diagram is the most basic diagram that shows how a

hydraulic motor works.

High pressure oil enters the motor. It rotates the shaft and low
pressure oil leaves the motor.

In Framo system, you will not be able to see the hydraulic motor
as it is placed in the outer casing.
 And there are no serviceable parts in a Framo hydraulic motor.

2. Power Packs

For the Hydraulic motor to rotate the impeller, there need to be

high pressure of hydraulic oil.

Power packs supply this high pressure hydraulic oil to the Framo
hydraulic motor.

Power packs are either installed in the forecastle store or in the

engine room of the ship.

Power pack system consists of

A hydraulic oil tank to draw the oil from

 High pressure pump to take suction from the Hydraulic tanks
and pump this oil into the hydraulic pipeline on deck

Electric motor to run the High pressure pump

It is important that hydraulic oil tank always have sufficient oil for
the high pressure pump. If it has less or no oil, the pump will get
damaged.

Less or no oil can be because of two reasons.

No oil in the tank

Closed Suction valve to the power pack

 There are two safe gaurds in the Framo system to ensure this.

Closed suction line trip

Low oil level trip

Closed suction valve trip

If the suction valve for the high pressure pump is closed, the
power pack will trip. This ensures that the suction valve of the
pump to take suction from hydraulic tank is not inadvertantly
closed.

The alarm for the trip will display in cargo control room as well as
Engine control room.
There is a sensor arrangement for the suction valve, which senses
if the suction valve is fully open.

In old Framo system this could be a manual valve with its handle
touching the sensor. If the suction valve is even slightly closed, its
looses the touch of sensor and trip is activated.

In new systems, the valve is not a manual valves. In this case the
a proximity sensor is fitted on top of the valve, that senses if the
valve is fully open or not.

Low oil level trip

 The power pack can loose suction if there isnt sufficient oil in the
hydraulic tank. For this reason when the oil level in the hydraulic
tank goes below minimum level, the power pack will trip.

The oil level in the hydraulic tank is kept just above the alarm
level. This ensures that any leakage in the line will be
immediately detected without the loss of much of hydrualic oil.

There are two alarms for low level

Low Level alarms, and

Low Low level Alarm

 When the level is at Low level, an alarm will activate and will be
displayed in CCR and ECR.

If the level of the oil further drops to Low Low, the hydraulic oil
system (Power pack) will trip.

If the low oil level trip is activated, the reason for low level must
be investigated. The oil can then be refilled either from the
standby tank or spare drums whichever available.

It is important to fill only the correct grade of hydraulic oil.

3. Cofferdam and Purging routine

So far we have discussed that

Framo pump is run by hydraulic motor and

Hydraulic motor gets the pressurised hydraulic oil from the

power packs

Now let us see the internal parts of the framo pump.

 If you notice,

the red section is the high pressure hydraulic oil going into
the hydraulic motor.

Yellow part is the hydraulic oil return.

Both these pipes are concentric to each other. Like in below

picture.

This pump is inside the cargo tank and there are two liquids
(hydraulic oil and cargo) that should not come in contact.

If the hydraulic oil leak into the cargo, cargo can damage. If cargo
goes into the hydraulic oil, the hydraulic system will damage.

As you might have guessed, there is something in the Framo

pump to prevent that. There is hydraulic seal that prevents
hydraulic oil leakage to the cargo side. And there is cargo seal
that prevents cargo leaking into the hydraulic side.
But seals can leak overtime, right ? so if any of these seals are
leaking, how would we know ?

That is exactly the purpose of cofferdam.

You can think of cofferdam as a steel cup with cargo seal at the
bottom. Any hydraulic oil or cargo leakage will collect in this
cofferdam.

It is important to know if the cofferdam is empty or not. And this

is done by purging the cofferdam.
We introduce air or nitrogen in the cofferdam and check the outlet
of the purging line.
 If we just get the air in outlet of purging line, the cofferdam
is empty. So no leakage of hydraulic oil or cargo and both the
seals are intact.

If we get cargo in the cofferdam, it indicates that the cargo

seal of the Framo pump is leaking

If we get Hydraulic oil in the cofferdam, it indicates that

Hydraulic oil seal of the framo pump is leaking

If we get mixture of Hydraulic oil and cargo, it indicates that

both oil seal and cargo seal are leaking

If any of the seal is leaking, it need to be replaced with new seal

after the discharging and tank cleaning of the tank.

Framo has a purging routine which shows when the purging of the
pump cofferdam need to be carried out.
 [Click here for larger view]
We must keep history of purging records for all previous voyages.

For some cargoes, we are supposed to not do the cofferdam

purging. These may be toxic cargoes such Toluene Diisocynate or
solidifying cargoes such as Palm oil.
In these cases we need to fill the cofferdam with some liquid (DOP
in case of loading TDI) so that cofferdam is not blocked with the
cargo.

4. STC Valve (Before known as Flow control

valve)
Now we have the pump and the hydraulic system to run the
pump.
But like any other type of cargo pump, Framo too would have an
operational requirement.

To be able to run the pump at different speeds

To achieve this, we should be able to control the flow of the
hydraulic oil to the hydraulic motor of the Framo pump. This is
because more the flow of pressurised oil to the hydraulic motor,
more speed the impeller will rotate.

This is exactly what Speed torque controller does. STC is fitted on

top plate of the pump on main deck. The Hydraulic oil inlet pass
through the STC.

STC of the pump controls the speed of the pump by allowing only
the required amount of hydraulic oil to pass through to the
hydraulic motor.
 STC also prevent the pump to overspeed by controlling the
amount of oil to the hydraulic motor of the pump.

There are two ways to control the speed of the pump through STC.

From the local control on the STC

From the cargo control room

Local control valve on STC

With local control valve, we can control the speed of the pump
locally from the pump itself. This becomes handy during stripping
of the tanks or tank cleaning.

Local control valve is a kind of knob located on the STC. When we

close the knob (by turning clockwise), the STC passes the oil to
the pump.
When we open the knob (by turning anti clockwise), the STC
bypasses all the oil and nothing goes into the hydraulic motor.
Pump stops or do not run in this case.

By partially closing the local control valve, we can adjust the

speed of the pump.

Starting the pump from the cargo control room

Speed of the pump (or we can say operation of STC) can also be
controlled from cargo control room.

We do this by a lever provided in the cargo control room. Each

pump has a lever that connects with the STC of that pump by a
hydraulic control line.
As we push the lever up to start the pump, a signal in form of
hydraulic control line pressure goes to the STC.

STC then releases the amount of oil to the hydraulic motor which
will be corresponding to the amount to lever lifted.

Here is the actual photo of the STC and pump stack on deck.
Remote start and Local start
Both, the remote start from CCR and local start from the pump
location are interconnected.

We cannot start the pump from local control if the pump Lever is
not pushed up from the CCR.

Same goes other way around.

If the local control knob is in open position, the pump will not work
even when the pump lever is operated from CCR.
 So for the pump to operate, STC need to have the signal from
both from local control valve as well as remote lever in CCR.

If we need to start the pump from local control

We open the local control valve by rotating it anti clockwise

We push the lever up from the CCR

We operate the pump locally by slowly closing the local

control valve

If we have to start the pump from CCR

We close the local control valve by rotating it clock wise

From CCR , we push the lever up to start the pump

5. Feed Pumps

For the Framo system to work efficiently, the hydraulic oil used in
the system need to be in absolute good condition.

There are few things that can degrade the hydraulic oil quality.

Moisture ingress due to hydraulic lines being in vacuum due

to temperature variation

Air in the system that can cause vibrations, frothing of the

oil etc.

Small particles that can be inside the oil during filling of

hydraulic oil tank or after a maintenance on the system
Feed pump takes care of all of these issues. Here is how.

Feed pump always keep on running, 365 days in a year, 24 hours

a day. Feed pump maintains positive pressure in the lines and
hydraulic system . It continuously recirculate the oil through
entire hydraulic oil system

Usually pressure of more than 5 Bars is maintained in the system

even when the system is not in use.

Now when the system is always under positive pressure, the

chances of moisture ingress are minimum

Air if any is auto released to the Hydraulic tank while recirculation.

Off course if air is still suspected in the system, there is air
purging arrangements in the Framo.

And any particles in the system are filtered while feed pump runs
the hydraulic oil in recirculation mode. This is because the
recirculated oil is made to pass through the filter.

Recirculation of hydraulic oil through feed pump also avoids oil

temperature variations at different parts of the hydraulic system.

There is another function that feed pump serves.

It helps in keeping the feed pressure on the suction side of the

main hydraulic pump. This means that when high pressure power
pack pumps are taking suction from the hydraulic tank, feed
pump ensures that there is no negative pressure on the suction
side.
Feed pump alarms
One of the feed pumps must always be running when the power
packs are not in operation. If the feed pump stops, the
protection pressure Low alarms will be initiated.

When starting the first main power pack, two feed pumps will
automatically start before the power pack is started. This is called
high capacity mode of feed system. This is to keep the feed
pressure on the suction side of the main hydraulic pump.

Now let us say that one of the feed pump stops while running in
high capacity mode and the power packs are running. In this case
the third feed pump will start automatically.
If running signal for the third feed pump is not obtained within 3
seconds, the feed pressure low alarm will be initiated and
power packs will shut down.

6. Cooling and heating system

Hydraulic oil used in any hydraulic system has a optimum

temperature range for use. This is because higher temperature
can damage the seals and other components and also
it accelerates the degradation of oil.
Hydraulic oil used in Framo system is no exception.

Depending upon the surrounding temperature, the hydraulic oil

used in Framo may be below or above this temperature range.
If it is above the optimum range, the oil will need cooling. If it is
below the optimum range, it would need heating.

Even if the surrounding tempertaure is within optimum range, the

oil temperature will increase during operation.

If the surrounding temperature is below 20 C, we need to open

the heating and venting valve for heating with one power pack
running. When the oil temperature is well within operating range,
other power packs can be started.
Same goes for when the surrounding temperature is higher. The
hydraulic oil is made to pass through a oil cooler to cool the oil
before delivery on deck.

The cooling water inlet valve is automatically controlled. It will

open at hydraulic oil temperature above 50 C and will close when
temperature decreases to below 30 C.

The high oil temperature alarm will activate if the oil

temperature is above 60 C.

When oil temperature reaches 70 C, the power packs will trip.

7. Emergency Stops
 One final thing (among many other) that the operator of the
Framo pumps need to know is about Emergency stops for the
pumps.

These are the push buttons installed at different locations. When

pressed, the hydraulic system will trip immidiately.

The common locations for these emergency stops are

Cargo control room

Manifold port side

Manifold starboard side

 At the power pack location

On each ship, there could be few locations for emergency stop for
Hydraulic system. We must know all of these locations.

Conclusion

Submersible pumps on board tankers is the first choice for the

ship owners because of various advantages these offer.

This is particularly the case with chemical and product MR and LR

tankers.

Framo is leader among the submersible pumps fitted on board

tankers. For anyone working on tankers, this makes the thorough
knowledge of the Framo system a necessity.