A Basic But Helpful Guide On Framo System

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 Bernoilli’s 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. Haven’t 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 isn’t 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.