The world’s first extinguishing water facility in port

The extinguishing water facility in the oil terminal in Malmö is completed.

“It is a purely environmental investment, from today no contaminated extinguishing water or surface water will end up in the sea if a fire was to occur, which thankfully has never happened”, says Jens Haugsöen, oil terminal manager at CMP in Malmö.

The work started in October last year on the world’s first extinguishing water facility in an oil terminal. If a fire was to occur, the contaminated extinguishing water is now dealt with in the best way possible in terms of the environment. The businesses in the oil terminal - Nordic Storage, Statoil, Vopak, OK/Q8, STS, Preem, Norcarb Engineered Carbons AB, Univar and Wibax – have paid 67%, and CMP is bearing the rest of the total of almost SEK 5 million which the project has cost to complete. Furthermore, the bulk of the operations have requirements from the Environment and Health Administration, and these have now been met”.

The extinguishing water system is an addition to CMP’s ordinary surface water system. In the event of a fire, the surface water is redirected to the extinguishing water system. An approximately 800 meter long glass-fibre reinforced pipe – known as a GAP pipeline – has been laid in the ground to transport the extinguishing water and an approximately 22 metre pool has been made for temporary storage of the water.

In principle, an extinguishing water plant doesn’t require any staff, one person starts the pump in the buffer pool when the level is sufficiently high and the plant then functions automatically.

“Large diesel-powered motors pump the water”, explains Jens Haugsöen.

The water is then conveyed from the pool onward via a pump to a 9,900 cubic metre SAFIR tank.

Stefan Kristenssons Åkeri AB carried out the excavation work and built the buffer tank where the pumping stations direct all the surface water. Depåservice AB laid the underground GAP pipeline and also installed motorised valves and pump in conjunction with Malmströms El AB.