Containerized Fan Room Cuts Required Yard Time

In the offshore industry, time is always of the essence. Vessel owners make it a priority to keep the necessary yard visits as short as possible. To contribute to this short time priority, Heinen & Hopman has developed a containerized fan room that can be completely prefabricated and tested before delivery to the vessel. Due to this design, installation time onboard can be shortened tremendously.

 

A modified cargo or offshore certified container is used as the base for this fan room. The size of this container may vary from 10 feet up to 40 feet in high cube execution. The choice depends on the needed space to fit all required equipment and is influenced by the available space onboard. 

 

For the engineering and design of the containerized fan room, a specialized team of HVAC engineers with lots of experience in the oil and gas industry is deployed. In close cooperation with the customer a 100 percent customized design is being created to suit all necessary requirements. This design process also includes the possibility for the engineers to visit the vessel for a board survey. Goal is to reach a design that is completely plug and play. After installation onboard, the fan room only needs to be hooked up to the duct systems and electrical power system. 

 

The containerized fan room design includes air handling units with conditioned airflows up to 40,000 cubic meters per hour. Cooling capacities are available up to 800 kilowatts and are available in chilled water or direct expansion execution. Heating is normally executed with electrical heaters. Energy saving applications such as heat pump and heat recovery wheels can easily be integrated in the design. 

 

The first prefabricated 40-foot-high cube fan room has already been delivered to Paragon Offshore and was installed on the B391 jack-up drilling rig. This containerized fan room was placed on top of the accommodation and replaced the old fan rooms inside and was executed with two air handling units, two air-cooled chiller units and one dual pump skid. All ducting, chilled water piping, cables and control for a complete working system integrated in the container. Some of the integrated features are heat recovery wheels, 100 percent redundant cooling capacity and dual supply fans. The container itself was customized to fit some onboard restrictions and was executed with a weather tight door and service access hatch in the side of the container.