Durable pigs for oil derivatives

A UK based pigging systems company supplying hygienic solutions for liquid process industries has now made its unique technologies available for small to medium diameter pipelines in the Oil Derivatives market.

For many years this industry has used Knapp Pigs, which do not offer long durability due to their internal foam construction and thin polyurethane coating. The HPS Pig is constructed from specialised silicone materials and is extremely tough, yet very flexible. The design allows them to easily negotiate standard pipe bends or elbows of 1.5 x Diameter. They also have flexible magnetic cores that allow the pigs to be detected by specifically designed non-intrusive magnetic sensors.

Systems can be supplied for pipe diameters 1 inch through to 6 inch in fully automatic, semi-automatic or manual formats. The technology is recommended for use in factory transfer pipelines and is most beneficial for product lines that change batch or product type on a frequent basis. All systems are custom made to meet client requirements.

Technology cross over

In addition to providing a durable pig HPS have found that other innovative products provided to the hygienic sector also have technology cross over to the oil derivatives and chemical sectors.

The HPS Rotomatrix is a manual piggable rotating arm system that allows connection of multi-sources of product to multi-destinations. This system was developed to resolve issues experienced with traditional flowplates, where bend connections get damaged or lost and there is poor flexibility of connection combinations.

This photography illustrates 8 rotating Arms to 9 possible connections. Inverted designs are also available.

The HPS Automatrix is a fully automatic piggable valve matrix system that also allows connection of multi-sources of product to multi-destinations. This system was developed for plants that require fully automatic product distribution. Automatic valve matrix systems are generally available on the market, but the unique factor of the HPS system is that it is piggable. Another advantage of this system is that it has wide expansion capability of sources and destinations.

The above photograph illustrates a vertically orientated Piggable Automatrix.

The HPS 3 Way 120 Degree Diverter Valve is a piggable ball valve that allows Product to be transferred from 1 source to two possible destinations or vice versa. A complexed piggable product transfer network can be achieved by combining a series of these valves.

The photograph shows a typical installation of an HPS Piggable Diverter Valve installed for Croda Chemicals.

The Diverter Valves can also be configured as Pig Launching Systems, by attaching a Launch Chamber to one of the ports. This design allows access to the Pig for inspection or replacement whilst product is being transferred.

Payback

For plant modifications or design of a new plant, HPS technologies can be considered as alternatives to traditional methods of product distribution such as Flow Panels, as they can offer the ability to rationalise the quantity of pipework and associated equipment which will reduce overall project costs and as such reduce pay back time on the investment.

Combining these product distribution solutions with Pigging Systems offers year on year savings as the Pig will recover most of the product, thus preventing cross contamination between batches.

Environmental considerations

Adoption of Pigging technology can deliver a lot more than increased product yield and faster changeovers.

When you consider the reduction in waste from a high volume manufacturer of liquid products, significant return of investment can be achieved by the factory in this area alone as well as reducing their environmental footprint.

Consider if there is less waste to deal with from factories, then there will be less tankers or trucks required on the road to transport it, thus further reducing the environmental footprint.

There will also be a reduction in neutralising chemicals required for waste treatment facilities as there would be less waste to neutralise.

A recent example of this type of benefit, albeit from a different industry sector, was an HPS installation for a major Australian Winery. Initially the client was considering doubling the size of his wastewater treatment farm, which would have cost millions of dollars. HPS offered an alternative plant wide ‘Pigging’ solution at a fraction of the cost, which was taken up and installed last year. This client now considers his original wastewater treatment facility as too large and has recently published figures of projected water savings at 41Mega litres per year due to the Pigging Systems.

As legislation on waste volume output from liquid process factories gets ever more stringent and with subsequent costs continually spiralling upwards it is worth while considering Pigging technology as a possible solution.