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North Sea technology helping Isle of Man

A KT Hydraulics product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Feb 24, 2006

Technology developed for the North Sea offshore oil industry is helping Isle of Man Water replace the guard-valves and associated operating systems at its Clypse reservoir on the island.

Technology developed for the North Sea offshore oil industry is bringing benefits to maintaining everyday water supplies thanks to Halifax based hydraulic systems specialist KT Hydraulics.

The company has completed a contract for Isle of Man Water to replace the guard-valves and associated operating systems at its Clypse reservoir on the island.

The previous upstream guard-valves at Clypse had been manually operated from the surface via rod linkages over 50m long.

This required some 3000 complete turns of the operating wheel, taking up to fours hours to open each valve fully.

In comparison, the hydraulic actuator system completes the same task in 30s.

Once the reservoir had been drained and the existing upstream valves and linkages removed by IoM Water Authority contractors, KTH supplied and installed two hydraulically operated guard-valves with actuators plus the required control panel and hand operated hydraulic pump on the surface and all the necessary hydraulic pipework to link the system together.

KTH engineers then flushed, tested and commissioned the completed hydraulic system.

Richard Young, Project Engineer at Isle of Man Water Authority, said: "Mechanically operated relief valves were traditionally the only option available and their relatively low cost has kept such systems in the market well past their operational peak".

"Developments in hydraulic valve actuation technology have now rendered mechanical operation obsolete, providing far better performance and reliability with minimal maintenance requirements".

The installation at Clypse reservoir forms part of a growing demand from the water industry.

KTH Director Richard Ellis said: "Our years of development work in the offshore oil industry have produced a number of products that are easily transferable to other industries - in this case water utilities".

"Products such as our submersible gearbox and hydraulic systems are designed to operate in the harshest of conditions with minimal maintenance, giving them a long operational life in water and water treatment applications".

"The existing mechanical system at Clypse was only a few years old but already experiencing problems".

"The performance superiority of the hydraulic option was such that replacement rather than repair became the natural choice".

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