Bi-fuel Conversion on an Oil Rig

Recently ComAp installed and commissioned a bi-fuel conversion on an oil drilling platform located in the Black Sea. The Domino-1 drilling platform, owned by the Austrian company OMV, (Austria’s largest listed industrial company) is estimated to be able to produce around 1.5 to 3.0 trillion cubic feet of natural gas during its operational period.

ComAp successfully converted four Caterpillar 3512B generators to bi-fuel operation. Bi-fuel means that the diesel engine can be converted to use natural gas for the majority of its running time. Conversion to bi-fuel operation is especially beneficial when natural gas is usually burnt as a waste product, such as on oil-rigs. The gas that is normally burned can be used to generate electricity, providing twice the savings, as after conversion, the generator essentially uses free fuel (fuel which is usually vented and/or burned) for power generation. In this particular installation ComAp achieved a gas to diesel ratio of around 50% which is a very good result for this particular system, as they are using gas straight from the well, which is not as refined and pure as natural gas usually would be if used in a land based application. Another benefit of this particular operation was that they needed to get less diesel shipped to the platform as they used natural gas produced on the platform for the generator fuel for the majority of its running time.