McPIPE™ Extended Cooldown System

Deep Offshore Technology XIV George Murray Memorial Young Engineer's Award - Presented to Jennifer Bell / Mentor Subsea and Chris Geertsen / ITP InTerPipe - November, 2002
"The McPIPE Extended Cooldown System: One Week (and more) of Safe Cooldown"

Overview:

The McPIPE™ Long Cooldown System is an entirely passive system with cooldown times of at least 3 days, and up to 7 days or more, depending on threshold requirements. This unique solution is ideal for long tie-backs greater than 100 km (62 miles), as it eliminates the space, weight, and costs for additional power generation associated with warm fluid circulation and electrical trace-type heating systems.

McPIPE™ combines a Phase Change Material (PCM) with high performance Izoflex™ insulation encapsulated in a pipe-in-pipe arrangement. A liner seperates the Izoflex™ and PCM. During flowing conditions, heat from the produced fluids maintains the PCM in a liquid state. After a shutdown, normal cooldown takes place until the phase change temperature of PCM is reached. Once PCM cools down to this temperature, crystallization starts and heat of crystallization of the PCM is restored to the hydrocarbon which provides an extended cooldown time.

McPIPE™ utilizes a conventional onshore fabrication process and rapid offshore field jointing (S-Lay or J-Lay) for cost effectiveness. The proven field joint, performed in the Tchibeli field, West Africa combines mechanical robustness, thermal efficiency and laybarge time reduction. Offshore cycle time is typically 5 minutes per field joint and requires welding of only the inner pipe.

McPIPE™ is an insulated flowline system based on the intellectual property from J. Ray McDermott and ITP InTerPipe.