Pumping Project:
Sludge Transfer from Facility Tank to Barge78,000 Barrels Transferred
An oil storage facility in south Louisiana received contaminated fluids from a routine barge offload that reacted with the facility’s storage tank contents and transformed it into sludge. The facility attempted to transfer this sludge, but it was too thick for their pumps, and it plugged their inline strainers repeatedly. The storage tank contained an estimated volume of 78,000 bbls that needed to be transferred to a disposal barge before the sludge became worse. Once empty, the tank could be cleaned and placed back into service.
Baleen Process Solutions (Baleen) worked closely with facility engineers and supervisors to design a robust pumping system that could transfer this sludge to a disposal barge that was located ~ 2,300 feet from the tank. Baleen evaluated the tank’s contents on site and selected large, high volume centrifugal pumps as primary transfer pumps and large trailer mounted sludge pumps as secondary transfer pumps.
Baleen mobilized the pumping spread to the facility, along with personnel, and was able to successfully transfer the entire tank’s contents to the disposal barge in the span of a few days, averaging a flow rate of ~1,000 bbls per hour. Once the tank was emptied, Baleen flushed the entire system with water until it was clean, then rigged down and demobilized.
Baleen Process Solutions, in partnership with Nalco Champion, successfully completed the pipeline flushing and hydrotest project while maintaining IFO and exceeding all LA DEQ discharge parameters. The expertise of the Baleen Process Solutions team in this area ensured a successful and incident-free operation.