Case Study : Standalone Fuel Polishing : Completed Jan 2024

Introduction

In 2019 FSS were approached by a client with a requirement for a fuel polishing system but due to the location, high usage of fuel and potential variation in the quality of fuel supplied to them no current fuel polishing system available in the market would be suitable.

Fuel polishing is generally done in large, bulk tanks with static fuel (sits in the tanks for long durations) where relatively fine filtration is used and the fuel in the tank pumped through the polishing system potentially hundreds of times before it is used. A typical system would have 2 in line filters.

For this application the client would typically use 40-50,000lts of fuel a day, with no ability to re-circulate the fuel it had to be cleaned in one pass. Due to the sites extremely remote and harsh location fuel supplied to the site varies in quality but the generators that the fuel feeds must not breakdown. The generators are not back up but provide all the heat and power at the location.

Taking three years to design, FSS have built an utterly bespoke system with 4 separate fuel polishing rigs, all in line offering first magnetic, then particulate and then finally water filtration. Whereas a ‘normal’ fuel polishing system would have two filters this system has 25 in line filters. Each of the 4 individual rigs has had redundancy built in to ensure the fuel will always be able to flow. Realtime monitoring of the fuel condition is also built into the systems, normally taking a week to get fuel results back from the lab, this system real time monitors the fuels condition and constantly measures dirt at 4, 6 and 14 microns to offer an ISO code for the fuel at each stage of filtration.

The Build

Stage 1: A fully containerised solution was decided on, making the systems easy to transport to site (as were going by sea) and the container itself would offer ideal protection against the harshest of environments.

 

 

Stage 2: Fit out begins. Again, due to the location a fully insulated solution was needed to protect both the personnel, equipment and to not allow the fuel to get too cold.

 

 

Insulation fully installed and steel plating welded over it and painted with a specialist fuel, fire and chemical resistant paint. Ready to get installation of the polishing system started.

 

 

Stage 3: Dry fitting of all the polishing filters, pumps and equipment prior to fully making up all joints. These are 6 of the 25 filters we will be using.

 

 

Pumps now dry fitted.

 

In a first for us, clear sight glasses fitted to the polishing system so the fuel can be checked as it enters and exists the systems.