The Severn Glocon Group will present its High Integrity Pressure Protection Systems (HIPPS) for oil and gas topside and subsea applications at Subsea Expo.
According to the company, the subsea HIPPS will be the first to combine independent electronic and mechanical systems to provide a dual redundancy, pipeline pressure protection system.
Until now subsea HIPPS has been exclusively electronic, relying on pressure transducers and logic analyser voting logic to activate the two final elements, arranged in series within the pipeline, with each valve capable of independently isolating the flow when closed. However, concerns over wax deposition and hydrate formation desensitising the transducers have limited the take up of the pipeline pressure protection system.
The Severn Glocon subsea HIPPS adds a mechanical HIPPS alongside the electronic HIPPS, providing a second, independent, pressure protection system. The mechanical HIPPS system is more resistant to hydrate and heavy wax build-up, and significantly less likely to be impaired by such deposits. Using the mechanical HIPPS valves in a parallel, ‘layered’ arrangement provides a second line of protection in the event of a fault with the electronic system.
“Adopting the layered approach to subsea HIPPS using a mechanical HIPPS system is an elegant and simple solution to eliminating the potential risks associated with electronic HIPPS,” says Robert Walker , director, Severn Subsea Technologies.
“It allows subsea HIPPS to be deployed more widely as operators seek to tie-back high pressure marginal fields to existing pipeline infrastructure and topsides.”