Many refineries and chemical plants have benefited from bringing Motivo Group experts on board to resolve their buried pipe issues. When you have flow issues, ponding, backups, even sinkholes, we are the “go-to” team and have helped more than 20 facilities across North America.
Recently a North American Refinery had concerns that their oily water sewers were under-designed and, due to the critical nature of this section of the pipe, it could never be taken out of service for cleaning and inspection. After we performed a detailed inspection without taking the line out of service, we found a completely different issue: the design and capacity were both fine, but the pipes were full of hardened material. The material was so thick and immovable, it resembled cement.
Our team removed more than 100,000 pounds of trapped/hardened material out of the pipes. That’s a lot of gunk! It’s no wonder the Plant Engineers thought it might be a design issue. It’s almost impossible to imagine there being so much debris and material trapped inside.
In some of their buried pipe runs, we found some blockages that were cutting off 80% of the pipes’ flows. Subsequently, this reduced the capacity to the lowest common denominator and slowed everything else down and like a chain reaction had the units backup as well. Once this domino-effect takes place, more material hardens in lines and more back-ups and ponding occur, posing even more challenges. When their system slowed, the material that would otherwise make it to treatment remained stuck and became a hardened mess inside the piping system. With our proprietary methods, we were able to take care of this facility’s problems and had them back to capacity in a very short time with very little impact.
Solutions we deployed included our Specialty (“True”) Cleaning, mapping, and trenchless repair. Not only were our solutions better than the alternative of digging and replacing the buried pipes, we were more cost-effective. With our proven and detailed phased project approach, we help our clients take the first step to get up and running. Are you ready for lasting solutions to your process sewer and buried pipe challenges?
