Armada FPSO Pump Commissioning in The Indian Ocean

Amarinth prides its self on industry leading customer service from commencing a project through to final installation and commissioning of pumps on site. With this in mind when we were contacted to fly an engineer out to the Armada Madura FPSO, at short notice, to finalise the installation and commissioning ready for the FPSO to start operating, we had one of our lead engineers ready to go in as short a time as possible..

We were able to get Lee Read, our lead engineer on the project, trained for the necessary offshore safety certificates for the region and on site within a month. Despite tight travel deadlines and a very tight commissioning window, Lee was in India on time, and then out to the FPSO, which is situated 22 miles off the east Indian city of Kakinada. Lee then spent three days aboard the yet to be operational FPSO running and commissioning the Amarinth units, making them ready for full operation.

The order for the six API 610 VS4 pumps was particularly challenging, two were pour point depressant pumps that are 18m in length and the other four are methanol lift pumps that are 10m long. All pumps have PT100 temperature sensors that have been designed and built along the length of the pumps to monitor the temperature of each bearing individually. For each pump, the temperature sensors are terminated in a top surface junction box. The wiring is then fed to a control box through a unique armoured umbilical arrangement to on an independent instrument skid for each pump. All the pumps and associated wiring and instrumentation are rated for ATEX Zone 0.

The 18m long pumps incorporate a supporting system of brackets that Amarinth has designed which attaches each pump to its tank during installation ensuring that as the pump is lowered into the tank it remains perfectly aligned, reducing vibration and wear during operation.