Engineering skills

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CONTROL UPGRADE FOR FLOATING DREDGE INSTALLATION

Alewijnse has successfully upgraded the control system of a unique  oating sand processing installation

The upgrade of the complete control system on board the unique  oating sand processing installation Kaliwaal 41 was part of a complete overhaul ordered by owner Van Nieuwpoort Groep.

“The installation dredges sand and gravel, which are separated at the beginning of the process. The next step is the transfer of the gravel to a vessel alongside,” said Richard Pols, commissioning engineer at Alewijnse. ”With the installation of two new conveyor belts, the gravel can be loaded to an additional vessel on the other side of the pontoon as soon as the hold of the rst vessel is lled. ”The system [we installed] automatically switches between the conveyors without stopping the process.”

Project scope

Alewijnse was contracted for the upgrades to the automation applications and electrical installations at the same time as new conveyor belts, electric motors and a submersible dredge pump were being installed in order to increase the efficiency of sand production.

The systems integrator installed new hardware, adapted the wiring and updated the PLC program and SCADA to match the requirements of the new equipment.

Additional works included the expansion of the main switch board with an 800A power supply and the installation of a power cable for the new sand pump on the rear side of the production pontoon. The new pump dredges the ner sand fractions that are surplus to requirements and discharged through a conduit aft of the pontoon.

Kaliwaal 41 is a unique oating pontoon equipped with an industrial installation that is fed with material extracted from the riverbed, separates the sand from the gravel, and then uses vertical ow separation tanks to deliver up to 150 different grades of sand for use in concrete applications.

It is one of just a few oating separation installations in the Netherlands and is currently playing an important role in the Dutch Maaspark Well River widening project, which aims to create a safer living environment in the Maas valley between Well and Aijen.

Alewijnse and Van Nieuwpoort Group have been working together successfully for many years, ever since the original construction of the installation in 1998.

8 Alewijnse has

upgraded the complete control system on board the  oating sand processing installation Kaliwaal 41

Islands to get submarine cable connection

90km of cable at depths of up to 1150m will be laid between Spanish islands and the north coast of Africa.

Cable systems supplier Prysmian Group will lay subsea cables between two Canary islands and another island and a coastal city in North Africa.

It will also lay about 11km of land cable.

The two contracts are worth approximately €250 million and have been awarded by Red Eléctrica de España, the Spanish power grid transmission system operator.

One cable will connect power between the islands of Tenerife and La Gomera and the second will connect the Spanish mainland to Ceuta, a Spanish city on the north coast of Africa.

Prysmian’s cable-laying vessel Guilio Verne will be deployed to lay the cables in 2025.

The rst is a 66kV HVAC (high voltage alternating current) double circuit, three-core submarine power cable with EPR insulation and synthetic wire armouring, which Prysmian says will be laid at a world record depth (1150m) for this kind of cable.

The second cable is a 132kV HVAC double circuit, three-core submarine power cable with XLPE insulation and synthetic wire armouring and will be laid at about 900km.

The submarine cables will be manufactured at Germany’s Norderham Plant and Finland’s Pikkala Plant, which are both owned by the Prysmian Group. The land cables will be produced in the local plant of Vilanova in Spain.

8 Giulio Verne at Napoli

Courtesy Prysmian Group