Awarded Orders

The use of biomass in heating systems is beneficial because it uses agricultural, forest, urban and industrial residues and waste to produce heat and electricity with less effect on the environment than fossil fuels. This type of energy production has a limited long-term effect on the environment because the carbon in biomass is part of the natural carbon cycle.

Growing environmental concerns coupled with higher energy prices have led to a renewed interest in using animal manure, also known as feedlot biomass, to produce power. This can be accomplished either by burning manure directly for fuel, gasifying it with heat or by turning it into “biogas” through biological decomposition.

District heating (also known as heat networks or teleheating) is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating and water heating. The heat is often obtained from a cogeneration plant burning fossil fuels but increasingly also biomass.

Operated by the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) provides a thriving and collaborative environment for pioneering research in such subjects as particle physics, space science, materials analysis and biomedicine.

Approximately 1,200 staff at RAL support the work of more than 10,000 scientists and engineers, chiefly from the university research community, who are addressing many important challenges facing society and the environment.

The Lubrizol Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is a technology-driven global concern. Founded in 1928, in Cleveland Ohio, they provide complex specialty chemicals for the transportation, industrial and consumer markets. These products, which are designed to enhance quality and performance, include additives for engine oils, other transportation related fluids, industrial lubricants, gasoline and diesel fuel.

Marine distillate and residual fuel oils used for marine applications are often faced with challenges created by changing emission regulations and ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel standards. Concurrently, there is a demand for improved engine performance, fuel economy and lubricant consumption.

Discovered in 1953, the supergiant oilfield of Rumaila remains one of Iraq’s most significant natural assets but decades of conflict have left their mark on the oil-rich southern region of the country. To help rebuild the region and the rest of Iraq after the war years, it was decided to revive and radically increase production from the country’s main oilfields. In January 2008, the Iraqi Ministry of Oil announced the first Iraqi Petroleum Licensing Round.

The bid round resulted in just one license being awarded – to BP and its partner PetroChina. The partners teamed up with Iraq’s South Oil Company (SOC) and State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) to breathe new life into the Rumaila field, 50 kilometres (30 miles) to the west of Basra. Therefore, in 2009, BP became the first international oil company to return to Iraq after a period of 35 years.

BP, who are widening their use of electronic purchasing, employed a reverse auctioning portal allowing suppliers to bid for an instrumentation package for the Rumaila Water Injection Manifold. ABLE Instruments & Controls Ltd, who themselves recognise that the rapidly developing digital economy is the single most important driver of innovation, competitiveness and growth, were successful in winning the package award. ABLE are embracing new digital trends such as a dedicated ecommerce website, cloud computing, mobile web services and social media to radically change their business landscape, spurring innovation in business models, business networking, knowledge transfer and access to international markets.

BP has saved millions of pounds on its £8.5bn annual procurement budget by using e-auction technology. The technology reduces bureaucracy and speeds up the procurement process.

From their Woking base, FracTech Laboratories have been delivering high-quality technology services to the international oil and gas industry since 1993. They provide reservoir stimulation technical support – primarily rock mechanics and fluid/proppant testing and evaluation – as well as independent completions, hydraulic fracturing and geomechanics.

The South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) is a gas exportation pipeline that exports gas from the Shah Deniz gas field in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea to Georgia and Turkey for distribution. The 692km-long pipeline started delivering gas to Azerbaijan & Georgia in 2006. Delivery to Turkey commenced in 2007.

The pipeline is now being expanded to accommodate additional gas from the second stage of the Shah Deniz development project. Upon its completion in 2017, the pipeline’s capacity will have been increased by 16 billion cubic metres per annum (bcma) to 23bcma.

The engineering contractor CB&I was awarded the FEED, detailed engineering and procurement services for the expansion project and subsequently approached ABLE Instruments & Controls Ltd to supply the Magnetic Level Gauges for same. These were a mixture of standard side/side vessel connection and top entry variants, with ABLE providing the flanged stilling wells for the latter. Some of the applications, which included hydrocarbon, water and diesel level, required high pressure process connections to 1500lb.

The SCP is owned by South Caucasus Pipeline Company, a consortium of seven national and international energy companies which include BP (25.5%), the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) (10%), Statoil (25.5%), Lukoil (10%), Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO) (10%), Total (10%) and the national oil and gas company of Turkey (TPAO) (9%).

BP is the technical operator looking after the development and production activities, while Statoil is the commercial operator taking care of all business development and administration matters relating to the pipeline.

At Nynas Bitumen’s Eastham Plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, the journey from crude to highly refined process oil starts in the distillation column. The crude oil is pumped from storage tanks through a heat exchanger system where its temperature is increased to about 200°C – and then further heated in a furnace to around 300°C where it is partly vaporised before entering an Atmospheric Distillation Column.

Here the physical separation of the components takes place. The lighter components rise to the top and the heaviest components fall to the bottom of the column. The material from the bottom then enters a Vacuum Distillation Column via another heat exchanger. This is where the bitumen is produced. Vacuum distillation helps to maintain the inherently high binding characteristics of crude due to the lower operating temperatures.

As an established supplier of process control instrumentation to Nynas, ABLE proposed the Drexelbrook IntelliPoint RF Admittance Point Switch for the critical high level alarm duties on the bitumen storage tanks. Spillages from these bitumen storage tanks as a result of overfilling have a high potential for serious injury, as bitumen is stored at high temperatures and has a large thermal capacity. Furthermore, the coating rejection capability of the IntelliPoint is key to the success of the measurement of this highly viscous medium.

Prompted by regular odour complaints from local residents, in 2014 Thames Water embarked upon a project to upgrade the storm tank cleaning system at Acton Storm Pumping Station. This involved renovating the Amajet cleaning units in the tanks in an attempt to reduce odours emanating from the site. Units with larger, more powerful motors were installed in four of the storm tanks aimed at preventing solids build-up on drain down and jet washing points were fitted for easy wash down.

To assist with rapid, accurate odour detection at the works perimeter, Thames Water have purchased six of the industry proven Jerome J605 Hydrogen Sulphide Analysers. Following the model successfully deployed by Thames at their Mogden site, the analysers will be installed in environmental housings along the fence line for reliable parts per billion (ppb) level nuisance odour measurement and reporting.