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Success Stories
EIC Survive 2024 EIC Survive&&Thrive Thrive 2024
JulyJuly 2024 2024
Story type #service & solutions (main category) #innovation
Cokebusters
Benefits
Championing innovation in water filtration James Phipps Managing Director
How is Cokebusters thriving? Constantly innovating around its services and solutions, Cokebusters is finding new ways to help clients improve operational efficiency and reduce the risk of process safety related incidents, whilst also minimising cost exposure and associated environmental impact. Through the development of new filtration machinery, the company can now ethically clean and recycle millions of gallons of contaminated water during high intensity oil refinery site turnarounds, supporting major clients across the US. The Cokebusters’ water filtration solution brings significant added value to its core service enabling clients to significantly minimise operational burdens and on-site product handling charges. The challenge - For the past 20 years, Cokebusters has been a niche technology services partner for the international energy sector. The company specialises in the design, build and maintenance of patented equipment for the mechanical cleaning and intelligent pigging of small diameter, high pressure process piping and pipeline inventory. Cokebusters’ work involves removing hardened petroleum coke and scale from facility fired heaters and boilers, often extracting several tonnes of fouling from a single heater. Heater tube wall fouling significantly reduces thermal efficiency and increases the risk of corrosion and rupture. The fouling is removed using mechanical cleaning pigs, propelled by high pressure water, with the contaminated water then collected within tanks in its pumping units. Whilst these pumping units filter out larger contaminant particles, they cannot completely clean the water due to the very high-volume flow rates. The remaining wastewater that is handled by facility operators imposes a significant burden, with millions of gallons of ‘grey water’ requiring extensive treatment. This method also demands significant volumes of freshwater to replace that which is lost. Recognising the environmental and operational challenges, especially in remote and arid regions, Cokebusters identified the need to reduce the environmental impact and operator
▸ New units being added to the company’s network, including in the Middle East. • Revenue growth of £1.2m in 2023.
Key findings costs. This led to the opportunity to design a practical solution capable of processing waste and recycling water at sufficient volumes without hindering heater decoking performance. The solution - Taking the challenge to reduce environmental impact, lower costs, and address freshwater demand head on, Cokebusters embarked on developing and delivering a new technology to work alongside its pumping units and broaden the scope of company’s trademark combined service delivery. Designed, built and patented by Cokebusters’ Houston team, the new filtration machines are a containerised unit equipped with an operator control room, two water settling tanks, and a four-stage filtration system, each with banks of filtration pods, sized according to required specification. The initial prototype unit was able to process wastewater at a rate of approximately 150 gallons per minute (gpm). More recently, a second-generation unit was developed to increased throughput capacity to 250-300 gpm, thus enabling the company to effectively clean much larger fired heaters without compromising the schedule. During a 10-day site turnaround involving multiple heaters, a single filtration unit ethically cleaned and recycled some three million gallons of water, which would otherwise require to be managed and disposed of by the facility. The wastewater can be continuously recycled thus significantly reducing the demand for further supply. The effectiveness of the solution has been demonstrated by a water filtration intervention at a major US Gulf Coast oil and gas operator’s facility. Here, since the filtration process was implemented, as part of a broader combined service, no further spillage has occurred, and no additional water has been required. During this time, Cokebusters has also deployed its filtration machines across several other US refining sites. In addition to environmental load reduction and operator savings, the firm’s regional income has been incremented by up to 10%, or US$1.5m per annum. The success of this concept has prompted the company to commission the construction of
For industry ▸ Be bold and proactive. ▸ Trust an innovative and diverse business. For government ▸ Support SMEs with funding.
Cokebusters at a glance: Key products and services: design, build and maintenance of specialised equipment for the mechanical cleaning, intelligent pigging and integrity management of small diameter, high pressure process piping and pipeline inventory. Main industries served: ▸ Oil and gas – 90% ▸ Onshore renewable energy – 5% ▸ Others (non-energy): chemical – 5% Headquarters: Chester, UK Year established: 2005 Number of employees: 100 Revenue: £14m Revenue from exports: 95%
additional units, including one for the Middle East region to replace current cumbersome on-site water handling techniques. Water filtration is now a component part of the company global business strategy with a third generation unit planned, targeting an additional diversification agenda. With such a significant growth rate, the firm is well positioned to further consolidate its reputation as a valuable industry technology partner in the future.