Cost-efficient temperature control solution for FPSO construction

The Prosperity FPSO is designed to produce up to 220,000 barrels of oil per day. Thorough testing of the gas turbines is necessary for full commissioning of the FPSO. If commissioning is delayed, this would mean financial implications for the client.

Turbines are precisely engineered and have very fine operational parameters. The customer needed to verify their GTG’s performance by stressing turbines to reveal potential issues before and after installation. It is expected that they be tested to their full potential - can they achieve maximum load, do they synchronise if multiple units run in parallel, can they take and shed load without any issues?

During the GTG test, the load provided has also to remain consistent and available. If not, the test would need to be restarted - delaying commissioning and increasing the fuel cost. Space constraints, a common problem on board rigs and vessels, was also another challenge.

The customer required a reliable and established partner who had a detailed understanding of their business and requirements while being able to engineer solutions for both power and load testing needs. Our operations personnel had experience of vessel commissioning projects and understood the requirements needed.

Based on the customers’ cooling capacity requirements for the vessel, Aggreko presented two solutions for the customer. First was a chiller plus cooling tower package and the other was a full cooling tower solution.

Based on our engineering calculations, our full cooling tower solution would only utilise 5% of diesel consumption compared to what the chiller plus cooling tower package would utilise. We presented the comparisons of both solutions to the customer.

Our single equipment solution not only helped the customer reduce their equipment rental costs, but it also reduced their carbon footprint. Requiring only one 10,000KW Cooling Tower for their cooling needs meant less space constraints and decreased mechanical failure rates of their equipment.

As compared to the chiller plus cooling tower package, which would require 2 to 3 barges to accommodate the equipment, our single cooling tower solution also enabled savings on diesel, barge rental and equipment maintenance costs.