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A smooth start-up
The Pearl team checked thousands of pieces of equipment as they worked to breathe life into the plant. They were specially trained to identify and prevent any potential glitches in the complex systems, helping them achieve a flawless start to production.
Pearl GTL’s control room is the nerve centre of one of the largest and most sophisticated plants ever built in the energy industry.
The control room includes almost 1,000 circuitry control cabinets and 200 computer servers programmed with 12 million separate software codes. The system is linked to every part of the plant by almost 6,000 kilometres of cables, which would stretch from Doha to London if laid end-to-end.
Testing a million joints
The complex plant contains a vast network of pipelines, with over one million joints connecting pipeline segments, known as flanges. Workers received specialist training in sealing the joints safely. Nothing was left to chance.
“You’ve got to go round the whole plant and test it thoroughly. You have to visit every flange, every nut, every bolt, every instrument connection,” says Commissioning and Start Up Manager Stephen Johnson. “We have to make sure that they’re all tight, with no leaks.”
In Qatar, he brought to bear his experience of starting production at the Nanhai petrochemicals plant in China in which Shell and China’s CNOOC each have a 50% stake.
Commissioning will take at least 12 months in total, building up to full production in 2012. It will take 800 operators and technicians to operate Pearl GTL once the plant is in full operation.
Desert dust
The location of the plant in a remote desert poses a unique technical challenge. A layer of desert sand as fine as dust settles on all equipment exposed to open air, and can get into equipment during construction. Gas turbines the size of jet engines are producing power and heat to generate steam to blow through the pipes at speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour to clean them. The heat makes the pipelines expand. When they cool and shrink, the dust and other deposits flake off and are blown out.
Pipeline sections are being tested to withstand pressures of up to 100 bar (1,450 pounds per square inch) — about the same pressure created by hydraulic crushers to flatten cars — by running water through them under pressure. Pipelines that will contain gas are tested by filling and pressurising them with nitrogen and helium to detect any defects.
Shell is applying a meticulous system to manage quality, cleanliness and tightness during construction and starting up plants at projects under way in more than 20 countries.
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