Amarinth supplies interchangeable replacement vertical pump to EDF for Sizewell B Power Station
Sizewell Nuclear Power Station, Suffolk, England. (Imagae source: Amarinth Ltd.)
A submersible wastewater management pump supplied by Goodwin in an ATEX Zone 1 tank was commissioned at the Sizewell B site some 25 years ago and so was coming to the end of its natural working life. However, these pumps are now obsolete, so a direct replacement was no longer available, meaning engineers had to find a new solution to maintain operations.
EDF required a pump that would perform the same duty as the Goodwin pump with minimal modification to pipework and fittings and that could be supplied on a 20-week deadline to fit around a planned shutdown window.
Replacement of obsolete equipment in power stations to maintain operations has become a major issue for the power generation companies and so Roll-Royce has created the Proactive Obsolescence Management System (POMS) to quickly identify equipment suppliers that can provide replacement solutions for the obsolete equipment.
Amarinth is both registered in POMS and had previously undertaken a site survey of the existing pumps at Sizewell, giving EDF confidence that the company fully understood the challenges of providing a replacement pump.
Amarinth proposed a bespoke vertical sump pump as the most cost-effective solution to replace the Goodwin submersible pump. The company leveraged its unique modular design suite for vertical pumps which it has configured to handle over 100,000 pump variants. All assemblies and sub-assemblies have been checked against mating parts for clashes using computer-aided design tools ensuring that any variant assembled from the modules fits together perfectly. Amarinth quickly produced a new ATEX certified 1.3m vertical sump pump design, manufactured in stainless steel, that was dimensionally and hydraulically interchangeable with the Goodwin unit.
The new ATEX compliant vertical pump was designed, manufactured, tested and supplied to site all within the necessary 20 weeks enabling EDF to fit the new pump during the scheduled shutdown period. This pump will now deliver another 25-year working life at Sizewell B with the support and supply of spare and replacement parts directly from Amarinth.
Oliver Brigginshaw, Managing Director of Amarinth, commented: “Having successfully supplied pumps to a number of power stations to replace obsolete ones we were delighted to provide this dimensionally and hydraulically interchangeable vertical pump to EDF at Sizewell B to replace the Goodwin submersible unit. This once again demonstrates Amarinth’s ability to provide a long-term and cost-effective solution to power generation companies as existing and often obsolete equipment reaches its natural end-of-life.”
Source: Amarinth Ltd.
