Drive down compressed air costs at Marine Contracting Company by over 50%
As one of the largest contracting company in UAE, it is a leading provider of fabrication, engineering and contracting services to the offshore and onshore oil & gas and renewable energy industries. The company’s facility at Hamriyah free zone located in the emirate of Sharjah in UAE is one of the largest however for their sand blasting and painting application, they employed portable diesel engine driven compressors.
The company’s management understood quite well operating diesel compressors was not efficient, a typical 750 cfm diesel compressor working 12 hours per day (4000 hours per year) consumes approximately 45 liters of fuel per hour, which in UAE costs around USD 100,000 per year besides the large number of service interventions to maintain the engine at every 250 hours results in very high operating costs. Utilizing electric motor driven compressors was clearly seen as an avenue to bring about substantial savings therefore in the last quarter of 2014, the company management set out a plan to install a completely new compressed air plant at Hamriyah and starting seeking solutions from different vendors.
The Atlas Copco oil free team in UAE went through a full review of different alternative solutions and based on life cycle cost, location of the installation, availability of power supply etc. arrived at solution with 2 compressor rooms placed at either end of the yard connecting the entire facility through a main header and deliver air at different locations. Each compressor room was supplied with 5 units (10 units in total) of GA 250 air cooled oil injected screw compressors along with equal number of air treatment equipment that included filters and FX 21 refrigerant air dryers. The new plant was completely installed and commissioned in July 2015 and after over 1 year of successful operation the team is extremely satisfied with the plant performance. Overall system efficiency and reliability has increased many folds. Moreover the plant is receiving treated air which has eliminated a lot of problems related to air quality. Last but not the least, the overall operating cost when measured compared to the old diesel system has seen savings in operating cost of over 50% which has brought a lot of smiles to the company.
We have delivered on our promise of Sustainable Productivity to the customer who save costs meanwhile reducing environmental impact which is one of the key commitments of Atlas Copco.