Vopak Butadiene Cooling - EPC

Fluor executed engineering, procurement, and construction management services for a fast track project for Vopak Terminal Vlissingen to install a cooling system and cold insulation on two of the existing pressurized gas storage spheres.

The project was intended to minimize dimerization of the butadiene product during storage by maintaining the temperature in the sphere below 5 °C.

The project was delivered to Vopak with zero lost-time incidents (LTIs), on time, and within budget.

The project included cold insulation of two spheres, cooling system consisting of chiller units, pumps, heat exchangers, and associated piping, electrical and control systems modifications.

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Client's Challenge

Project schedule was extremely challenging to meet Vopak's customers' requirement to have the cooling system operational before the summer period. The installation was completed on time, within eight months from start of the detailed engineering. The project was executed in a live plant with minimum interruption to ongoing terminal operations.

Part of the project was to select the best available cold insulation technique for the gas spheres. A complicating factor was that the cold insulation needed to be installed during wintertime. A field test, held under extreme winter conditions, was organized to test the adherence of the glued insulation elements under winter conditions. In order to create the optimum conditions for gluing of the foamglas cold insulation elements on the sphere surface it was decided to construct a fully closed and heated enclosure around the sphere.

Conclusion

The project was delivered by Fluor within the requested timeframe to Vopak and the new constructed cooling and insulation system has proven to operate within the defined envelop.

Based on the good performance of Fluor on the Butadiene cooling project, Vopak decided to award to Fluor a new study for an expansion project.