Objective
To design and manufacture an Industrial E.B. System incorporating two E.B. guns (Laboratory Prototype System has only one) and a new Control System to perform offshore pipeline welding in J mode. To prove the viability of the Industrial E.B. System before the same is installed on the lay-barge Saipem 7000. We estimate that, for a given project, the saving expected in case of use of E.B. welding (in term of reduced lay-barge engagement) is in the range of 25-30% (depending on pipe diameter and wall thickness). The required pay-back time, under the conservative hypotheses that Saipem would lay about 300 km/year with J mode, is estimated in about 2-3 years.
The prototype system manufactured and tested during Phase 1 will be converted into an Industrial E.B. System for offshore J-lay application.
The Industrial E.B. System will comprise two E.B. Guns and relevant Power Supply Units controlled by a single Control System containing a Computer Numerical control (CNC) unit. The E.B. guns will be mounted on an integration system and clamped to the stationary pipe while an internal clamp will provide internal vacuum. The Industrial E.B. System will be titled by 0° to 30° to allow welding on inclined pipe.
The following main activities will be performed :
- Improvement of critical E.B. areas and welding tests for E.B. application to pipe grades, pipe diameters and w.t. adequate for offshore J-laying.
- Conversion of the Laboratory Prototype System into an Industrial E.B. System,
- Engineering and Manufacturing of the Industrial E.B. System,
- Commissioning of the Industrial E.B. System.
The main innovative content of this project relates to the special high power electron beam equipment and mode of operation developed by TWI. Specifically, the new technology :
a. provides the ability to operate at reduced pressure (0.1 to 100 mbar instead of 0.01 to 0.001 mbar); this minimises system down time and reduces the criticality of the vacuum seals.
b. utilises an advanced, rugged, RF excited, diode gun, providing overall stable performance and allowing the use of a small diamater, single core, high voltage cable. This makes the gun technology ideally suitable for compact, mobile welding heads, whilst avoiding the complexity and fragility of multi-core high voltage cables, termination and auxiliary supplies.
Context of the technology :
Deeper waters J-lay pipelaying. Saipem have decided to explore further the possibility of using the E.B. welding process for incorporation in a J-laying system since it will lead to higher integrity pipelines with less risk of environmental pollution.
The cost of the equipment developed through this project is about ten times higher than that of the conventional equipment.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
DEM - Demonstration contractsCoordinator
SAN DONATO MILANESE
Italy