While the demand for liquid hydrocarbons waxes and wanes, products keep moving through pipelines, and Sure Flow Equipment is proud of our work to ensure such essential products for our economy move efficiently.
Sure Flow recently shipped a number of basket strainers to be used in an outside pipeline pumping station. These were installed in a northern climate, so they have to be rugged for this environment.
The basket strainer is made of low temperature carbon steel. While it’s hard to imagine anything working when it’s this cold, it’s rated to -40°F / -40°C.
These unique units are designed to complement the existing pipeline pumping station.
They are particularly unique in that the unit includes reducers. Liquid comes into the strainer in a 10” pipe, then after straining the strainer reduces it to 8” to fit an existing installation. This is no regular unit in that it has to handle this flow when the size, and therefore capacity of the vessel, changes significantly.
You can see the reduction on the left-hand side of the photo below. We apologize for the unit already being strapped down for shipping, but sometimes in a shop as busy as ours the luxury of taking photos is an after-thought.
Impressive units like this come with an impressive weight, and at 1,600 pounds they include a davit assembly to assist the maintenance crew with cover removal for basket cleaning.
The units also include Differential Pressure Taps, or DP Taps. These will allow the user to monitor the difference in the pressure of the liquid with debris coming into the unit, with the pressure of the cleaned liquid leaving the strainer. When this differential gets too high it indicates it’s time to clean or replace the basket. The DP Taps installed on the output side are before the reduction so the calculation won’t be impacted by the larger volume of liquid being reduced to a smaller diameter pipe which would increase the pressure.
Sure Flow Equipment prides itself in our many levels of quality certification and these units include an ASME “U” Code Stamp Certificate of Authorization (ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code; ASME Section VIII, Div 1, Current Edition).
We have some regrets we didn’t get better photos. It’s like when your grandkids visit and they leave and you realize you didn’t take any photos. But then you realize you just enjoyed their company. In this case, we got so focused on fabricating a product to the high quality our customer demanded that we forgot to take photos. Let us assure you our team will devote that same kind of laser focus to fabricating your next order!