STORNES, a flexible fall pipe vessel built by Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore Co., Ltd (hereinafter referred to as “CIMC Raffles”) for the Dutch company Van Oord Marine Services BV was successfully delivered in Yantai, China. STORNES is the world’s fifth flexible fall pipe vessel. It features high technology and construction and commissioning difficulty, and can work in a variety of sea waters.

STORNES is a fall pipe vessel developed on the basis of bulk carrier. It is classed by American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), and its length is 175m, width 26m, depth 14.5m, and designed working depth 300-1200m. The vessel is equipped with 2 sets of main engines, each 4000KW, 2 sets of shaft generators, each 2200KW, and 4 sets of auxiliary engines, each 1818KW, to achieve the second class dynamic positioning capability (DP2). Also its living quarter accommodates maximum 51 persons.

Dual automatic discharge channel is equipped under the cargo cabin of the vessel; C-shaped conveyor belts and rotating arm are at the bow area to achieve self-unloading, with the rotating arm extends no less than 77m to the outboard; moon pool and down tubes are in the middle of the cargo cabin area. The vessel mainly functions for underwater stone laying operations, besides serving as an efficient self-unloading bulk carrier with self-unloading capacity of 3000 tons (or 2,500 cubic meters) per hour, which is both widely applicable and highly economical.

Fall pipe vessel is one of the indispensable tools for offshore exploitation, and one of the essential equipments in the field of high-end offshore engineering. The successful delivery of the flexible fall pipe vessel STORNES, marks CIMC Raffles’ another new breakthrough and China’s new progress, in the design and construction of high-end offshore special vessels.

Source: cimc-raffles, July 12, 2011