Safety is of the essence. If you succeed in improving a technique so that a task can be done in half the time, then the exposure time for all workers and the risk of an incident is also cut in half.
During cutting tests, we are always amazed by the great cutting speeds we can achieve when cutting single plates. Cutting sheets with a thickness of 250 mm (!), we still achieve cutting speeds of over 1,000 mm per hour. But as soon as it comes to sandwich structures, and especially when water layers are present between the sheets, the cutting speed goes down dramatically. In other words, the cutting power is available, but a big part of that power is lost in the water layers between the steel walls.
And that is exactly what got us thinking. How can we avoid losing cutting power in the water layers between the different steel sheets. Well we don’t need more power, we just need to keep that power together.
So if we succeed in this, we can speed up multistring conductor cutting and contribute to a safer working environment for all crew involved.
We at SUBMAR think we have an answer tot his challenge. And we didn’t just do that on our own. We were lucky to work with one of the world’s leading theorists on the behavior of fluids at extreme high pressures. From that study came some remarkable theoretical ideas. The biggest challenge is to turn those theoretical ideas into practice. We are convinced to have designed a cutting head in which we have been able to realize the theory behind keeping the jet together. And now, of course, comes the most exciting moment: we are going to turn theory into practice and test the new developed conductor cutting head!
In any case, a share amount of believers within the decommissioning world also believe in the theory and are, together with us, looking forward to the test results. These believers have strengthened this trust by providing us with four decommissioned multistring conductors. Performing the cutting tests in such a realistic environment will add more power to the results.
Somewhere in March, by April the latest, we should know whether it is a success or a blowout. Exciting times! We will keep you posted.
