MELTING OF NORM- CONTAMINATED EQUIPMENT OF AN OFFSHORE OIL PLATFORM

• Main Authors: Siempelkamp Nuklear, Umwelttechnik Gmbh, U. Quade, T. Kluth
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.625.9232; http://www.wmsym.org/archives/1999/27/27-4.pdf

About 6000 offshore plants for oil and natural gas exploration are world wide in operation. 640 are located in the North Sea and North Atlantic area, 60 of which have been shut down so far. The contamination of these installations with heavy metals e. g. mercury and NORM requires an ecologically disposal concept. The Continental Netherlands Oil Company B. V. ( CONOCO) has shift their Kotter and Logger platform to a new owner. For treatment of residual NORM contaminated process equipment CONOCO was looking for alternatives to the expensive and time consuming traditional decontamination technique of hydro blasting combined with state of the art gamma detection equipment, which result in the decision to melt these material in the special melting plant at Siempelkamp. Based on the experience collected by recycling of about 12.000 t slightly radioactive contaminated scrap from the nuclear industry, Siempelkamp has started operation of a dismantling and melting shop for NORM and/or hazardous contaminated scrap on January 1998. 40 t of CONOCO scrap have been transported from the offshore platform to Krefeld according the ADR legislation. Here the components were cutted to chargeable pieces and melted in a induction furnace with 8 t capacity. By the melting process the NORM scale is separated from the metal and transfered to slag and filter dust. Depending on the specific activity the waste streams slag and filter dust can used as road construction material or have to return to the supplier of the scrap for final disposal- in this case of Netherlands COVRA. Results of the project will be presented.