Rotec Hydraulics and our sister company Ram Reman Ltd will now traditionally be exhibiting at Seawork, the largest European commercial marine exhibition. Join us on our Stand (PB123).
0930 – 1730 Tuesday 11 June 2019
0930 – 1730 Wednesday 12 June 2019
0930 – 1700 Thursday 13 June 2019
Mayflower Park venue in Southampton, SO14 2AQ, United Kingdom.
For more information visit https://www.seawork.com/
In August 2017, the head of Rotec’s Plymouth Depot, Dave Nance, brought in an interesting enquiry from one of Rotec’s existing customers – an engineering firm specialising in work in Aviation, Land, Marine and Defence sectors.
The firm required a bespoke containerised flushing rig system for marine application. All Design work for the Container, Hydraulic & Electrical was completed in-house by Rotec, followed by a build by a team of Rotec engineers, in-house electrical specialist and a number of subcontracted engineers to help with the workload. The whole team was headed by Andy Rimes and Richard Renfree.
The project took 3 months from start to completion.
Bespoke container:
2x separate Power units installed inside the container:
Each Power unit generally based upon: 4 x 7.5 Kw Motor & Pump sets installed onto a 3000 Litre stainless steel reservoir
Custom made and designed electrical control operating system:
British Fluid Power Association recently published an article which collates testimonies from a number of BFPA member companies spokespeople, including Paul Prouse from Rotec Hydraulic Ltd. They consider some of the challenges associated with the effective use and maintenance of fluid power systems and related equipment within the marine sector.
One of the most challenging industry sectors for engineering sciences has to be marine, where technology must be designed and built to withstand the demanding conditions associated with the open seas. Therefore, within the fluid power and related systems and equipment industry, providers to the marine sector need to ensure their products are designed and built to be 100% fit for purpose.
Arguably the most glamorous market segment within the marine industry is superyachts. As many superyachts are based in warmer climes, such as the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or Dubai, the operation and maintenance of electro-hydraulic systems should be performed with equipment that can function effectively in very high temperatures.
Concept to design
Rotec Hydraulics Limited covers both commercial and pleasure applications. Rotec provides service and installation facilities to local and national fishing fleets, as well as operating systems for fuel, fire and hydraulic services fitted to luxury yachts.
Integrated systems
Integrated systems are the present and the future within the marine sector, according to Paul Prouse, Managing Director at RotecHydraulics Ltd. He maintains that the first challenge to providing the right system is obtaining a suitably detailed specification from customers of what kind of solution they are require for their specific system requirements and then matching these requirements to a practical solution that best suits the customer and the application. “There are now so many options electro-hydraulic/pneumatic products on the market which are constantly evolving,” said Prouse. “As the customer does not always know what is available it is up to us as design engineers to keep up to date with new products on the market and where they could be integrated if suitable.”
Prouse makes the point that an electro-hydraulic system that Rotec could fit on a superyacht would have to be compact, low maintenance and aesthetically pleasing whereas the same system fitted to a fishing boat would be rugged, industrial, easily maintainable and more cost sensitive. He adds that electro-hydraulics now offers a multitude of options that Rotec can then transpose to customers to give them system information, compact hydraulic systems, control interfaces and safety functionality.
Within the bespoke luxury yacht market, Paul Prouse makes the point that time from concept to design based on the budget can be difficult to predict as there can be many factors that increase design time over the original estimation. “Customers may have been working for much longer periods (months or years) on their design concept requirements, and when it comes to our part, timescales are often short in relation to the overall project timescales,” he said. “What could be classed as R&D work for bespoke projects is not always thought about or included in project costings and timescales, which adds pressure on designers to get it perfect first time.”
Rotec’s recent collaboration on the WaveAccess project was another example of a successful application of the use of hydraulics in a testing marine environment.
“Electronic control systems incorporating electronic valve control, electro-proportional valve control and actuator positioning feedback gives us a platform from where we can now control hydraulic actuators from a remote location without the need to be near to the hydraulic components,” he said.
Read more about the WaveAccess project: https://www.rotec.net/rotec-help-develop-groundbreaking-vessel-waveaccess/
The full BFPA article, including testimonials from other hydraulic companies available at:
https://bfpa.co.uk/news/charting-the-right-course-to-efficiency-in-the-marine-industry/
Author: Sarah Gardner, BFPA
Rotec was excited to be part of this year’s marine exhibition in Southampton, an event we have been returning to for over 10 years.
We shared our stand with our sister company – Ram Reman, the specialist in hydraulic cylinders who compliments Rotec’s core capabilities in the design, build, installation and maintenance of hydraulic, pneumatic and electronic systems.
This year Rotec decided to champion Parker Racor filtration products, offering 30% discount in honour of the event. Rotec and Parker have a long history of close partnership, with Rotec recently becoming the only Parker HTC (Hydraulic Technical Centre) in the South of UK. Stand Visitors could look forward to a game of ‘Can you guess where these Racor filtration elements are on our ship?’ with the chance to win small prizes, using a Parker IQAN unit incorporated into a lit up boat unit.
As always, we had a great time and we look forward to the next year!
Author: Sarka Humpolcova
Date: 15/07/2018
In 2014, Rotec were invited to join Coastal Charters, a commercial maritime business based in West Cumbria, on the development of WaveAccess.
The project originally came as a response to an emerging trend within the offshore wind industry to move the construction further out into the sea. The company anticipated the industry’s need for a reliable vessel that would be faster and able to cope with the challenging conditions further offshore.
The goal of the project was to design and build a rapid crew transfer vessel that would be faster, safer and cheaper to run than the vessels in use, resulting in the pilot vessel: Tenacity
The radical new design allows for transport of passengers and crew with dramatically reduced fuel consumption at twice the speed, while maintaining safety, minimising motion sickness and improving comfort at up to 40 kts in seas in excess of 2m. The vessel can be used for crew transfers in industries such as oil & gas, offshore wind and construction, search and rescue, patrol, medivac, safety boat, to name a few.
See video of the vessel in action on WaveAccess website or YouTube channel
Thanks to Rotec’s extensive marine experience and previous control systems the company had developed for use on multi-hull jet vessels in the wind-farm support vessel industry we were invited to participate in this innovative project.
Andy Rimes, Rotec’s Technical Director outlines the project “Together with the team at WaveAccess and other specialists we developed a bespoke control system for the twin waterjet propulsion system to provide fully automated synchronised control of the jets, clutches, thrusters and main engines both in normal forward cruising modes and reverse facing tower operations.”
The electronic system is based on Parker Hannifin’s Iqan mobile controller and associated products. “As well as the electronic supervisory control and monitoring system we also completely re- equipped the Italian Castoldi waterjets hydraulic drive and control systems to provide fully proportional control electronically controlled from the Iqan system. This provides a smoother, more controllable and economic drive system. “
All design work and bench testing took place at Rotec’s premises in Taunton, with the installation, setup and sea trials carried out by Rotec engineers at Coastal Charters home in Cumbria.
It was a challenging, yet ultimately rewarding, experience to be involved with the development of a concept vessel such as this and we wish Stephen and all the crew and team at WaveAccess best of luck with their promotion of the successful and innovative vessel to the industry.
For more information please visit: www.waveaccess.co.uk
Author: Sarka Humpolcova
Date: 06/04/2017
CGG Veritas and Rotec Hydraulics have a long history of working together.
CGG is a leader in cutting-edge geoscience. Their commitment to providing innovative and sustainable solutions has seen them crowned a leader in their field. The technology, services and equipment they provide is designed to collect data and images of the sub-surface with great precision. CGG help the oil and gas industry to develop a deeper understanding of the subsurface exploration via state-of-the-art software and data analysis services.
Rotec supplied the company with enormous power packs in past and, in 2010, was contracted again, this time to equip their seismic ship Oceanic Sirius with a bespoke air reduction panel. The large panel is designed to work with a system that maps the sea bed for oil industry. Using acoustic sources towed behind the ship to shoot out high frequency sound waves that bounce off of different layers of the seabed’s sub-surface and get picked up by hydrophones, working a bit like an ultrasound. This data is then recorded and interpreted, helping the experts to make informed decisions about new drilling locations.
Find out more about seismic mapping in THIS VIDEO
The Rotec reduction panel is designed to routinely regulate between air pressure of 140 bar and 30 bar when not in use and was
Reduction Panel on Oceanic Sirius
manufactured in 2010, installed and commissioned on the ship in 2011, running smoothly until a major overhaul in January 2016, when the system had to go through its pressure equipment certification. The system performed great during the testing, but started having problems following the overhaul.
At first the capable CGG engineers were attempting to tackle the issue with Rotec’s telephonic guidance, but due to the nature of their jobs (12 hour shifts and swapping of engineering crews every 5 weeks with practically zero downtime), it was near impossible. They decided to contract one of Rotec’s engineers to repair the system. Claire Brown was scheduled to meet the ship in Barranquilla (Colombia) in September and after a 25 hour journey and a day’s wait she finally boarded the ship together with a group of contractors that were servicing and working on other parts of the ship.
This is what Claire had to say about the experience
“The hotel I was staying in was lovely, but I was advised not to venture outside. The government is currently building new infrastructure, but the city’s poverty is tangible as things stand at the moment. The relative luxury of the hotel was a stark contrast to what unravelled in front of me on our way to the port. I would have liked to see more of the city or the country of course, to form a more complete picture. The mosquito repellent I brought definitely came in handy; they were everywhere (laughing),”
After the initial compulsory ship orientation, Claire got shown to the Chief mechanic, and by 3pm she identified and repaired the problem. However they could not test the system while the ship was still docked, as the air powered guns used to blast out the acoustic waves go off rather loudly. Once out at sea the system performed well and Claire spent additional 5 days on board of Sirius going through their kit, and making sure they had everything they needed, ordering additional items.
Claire says “I quite like going off to places and seeing how other people live, but also I like working with different people. The crew was made up of many different nationalities (British, Canadian, Norwegian, Lithuanian, French, Spanish, Filipino and American). These guys are working such long hours, live in a restricted space but they get on so well, it was pretty inspirational. They make light of the stereotypes, for example they dubbed me as the ‘posh’ one, because of my british accent (laughs)”
Update: Claire has been back for a couple of months and there have been no problems with the system. We are looking forward to offering our marine expertise to the company in future.
Author: Sarka Humpolcova
Date: 03/01/2017