ABB has expanded its Diode Supply Unit (DSU) based power supply unit with insulated gate bipolar transistor (ISU) modules to enhance the oil pumping operations at Vopak Horizon Fujairah in the UAE
Located on the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz on the eastern side of UAE outside the Gulf, Vopak Horizon Fujairah is a storage and handling service provider for petroleum products.
ABB said the power and automation technology group had helped Vopak Horizon Fujairah in the operation of 50 pumps at the tank farm through a complete engineered multi-drive solution along with non-sparking motors and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) for the process control.
The statement added that the latest ISU were added to the existing DSU. The expansion enabled the terminal to operate more pumps on demand with a total power consumption capacity of 8.7MW. Earlier this was limited to 3MW with diode supply units.
The IGBT based system helps additionally to reduce the system harmonics level from 30 per cent to four per cent. This eliminates distortion in the electricity network and improves the power factor near to unity which is improving system stability and efficiency.
Vopak Horizon Fujairah services include receipt of oil from and delivery to ships, inter-tank transfers, pipeline transfers to neighboring terminals and ship-to-ship transfers. The operation of the tank farm is critical and demands minimum downtime due to high operational costs.
“We rely on IGBT technology to improve the overall efficiency of our pumps since the demand for quick oil handling and continuously increasing pace of productivity is essential for the success of our business. We doubled the capacity of an existing substation using ABB drives, enabling an improved productivity of the connected pumping station,” said Christiaan van Nielen, terminal manager, Vopak Horizon Fujairah.
