EMCE supplies CT winches for Magnolia ETLP
04 April 2004
The Dutch Machinefabriek EMCÉ BV:CT Winches for Conoco Magnolia ETLP
The Dutch Machinefabriek EMCÉ BV is a subsidiary of Stokvis Holding. It specialises in the design and manufacturing of customer-specific winches, for hoisting and pulling with a safe working load ranging from 100 Kg to 100 tons, in conjunction with the related controls. Its assortment of winches ranges from a substantial number of standard winches (up to 30 tons), to custom-made solutions for extremely specific applications. Recently they supplied some special winches for the installation of the Conoco Magnolia ETLP for GoM. In this article are the details.
Examples of winches of the assortment of EMCÉ are lifting winches, tugger winches, traction winches, umbilical winches, capstans, windlasses, hose reels, guide line winches, pod line winches and service winches. In other words, EMCÉ supplies winches for a diverse range of applications for the offshore industry as well as for the marine and general industry.MR 30 FLDuring the past OTC, EMCÉ introduced a new 150 kg dedicated man riding winch for use on offshore platforms. This man riding winch MR 30 FL will be on display again during the OTC 2004. One of the sales leads originating from this exhibition asked for 8 identical 25 Ton Constant Tension winches which have to be used for the mooring of the Magnolia ETLP platform.
MR 30 FL Magnolia project
The final and revised inquiry for the CT winches was received in November 2003 and was asking for 8 off 12,5 Ton Constant Tensioning winches with options like cable tension readout, line speed and line pay out monitoring. The winches would be used for pulling the Tendons inside the Porch. Two winches are located at each corner of the TLP and the wire is paid out directly from the winch without the use of any sheave. The angle of pay-out will be approx. 10 degrees from vertical, the wire passes through a Centralizer. The connection from the winch wire to the Top of Tendon is by Ball Grab. The purpose of winches is to keep the Tendons coming in contact with Tendon Lock-off Equipment. There are a total of 8 Tendons to be pulled inside the Porches at the same time, 2 Tendons at a spacing of about 11.6 meters are located at each corner. The corner to corner distance is about 51 meters. The top of all tendons is located at 18.3 metres below water. When the TLP is maneuvered over the Tendons, the distance between the winch and tendon will be about 50 metres.
In this case, Tendon will be about 33 meters above water surface. Tendons due to current are unlikely to be aligned with the Tendon Porch and also TLP will have a watch circle. It is estimated that this may result in additional Pay-out from the winch of about 60 -65 metres. This is the region where ConocoPhillips requires a constant pulling capacity of 12.5 Tons (27.5 Kips) with pay-out/pay-in rate of 0.2 meter/Sec. In other words, the pay-out/pay-in rates are linked to the TLP/Tendon behavior to prevailing environment conditions. Hence, the key to success of the operation will be proper Constant Tensioning function of all winches. EMCE has tested the heave compensation system on their own “in house” testbed facilities witnessed by their client (Saipem Inc.)
The winches were supplied at the end of January 2004 and installed on the TLP in Corpus Cristi during March. In June the actual job will be performed. During the mooring job an EMCÉ engineer will be available as back up. OTC 2004For the OTC a new range of compact air winches will be introduced. The range consists of seven utility winches ranging from 2,000kg to 10,500kg, two man rider winches of 1,500kg and 3,150kg and a Guideline and Podline winch. New brochures with detailed technical specifications can be obtained upon request or collected during the OTC 2004.
