Damen DOP Pumps Put to the Test in Apeldoorn

Various Damen DOP pumps are being used to create a profiled building pit for the Royal Palace Museum “Het Loo” new visitors center in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands.

The “Het Loo” Royal Palace is a well-known Dutch museum. To accommodate the increasing number of visitors, it had to be enlarged.

In order not to spoil the fabulous view on the 17th century palace, the new visitor center will be located fully underground in the central courtyard. This underground area is created by a number of DOP dredge pumps.

To pump away the bulk of the material – some 20.000m³ of sand and gravel – a DOP250 is used. This DOP pump is fixed to the boom of a CAT345 by means of a quick coupling, and it runs on the excavators hydraulics.

The DOP250 cleans the entire area of the inner court yard of the Palace, making use of 8 bar jet water on the suction head, to a dredging depth of -6.5m. The dredged mixture is pumped through 220m floating flexible pipe line and 310m HDPE land line to a spoil field, located at a geodetic height of +14m.

A DOP250 is used as booster station midway in the piping to keep the velocity of the dredged mixture up.

Cleaning the last 50cm of the building pit was done by a DOP200, also attached to a CAT345 and driven directly by its hydraulics. The reason for this is that the DOP was to make profiles on the side of the building pit. Another DOP200 acted as booster to pump the mixture to the same spoil field.

Ballast Nedam Specialistisch, the contractor for the project, is expected to finish the dredging works in Q1, 2019.