Iran has achieved self-sufficiency in manufacturing of various types of pumps used in oil and gas industry after producing cryogenic pumps, managing director of Iran Industrial Pumps Group said Tuesday.
Cryogenic pumps, or cryopumps, are used for adding propane and butane gases to the refinery processes in gas refineries. "Our cryopumps are as good as the European-made ones and better than the similar pumps made by Asian countries," IRNA quoted Faraj Pourvand as saying. He added that the IIP engineers spent three years on designing and making the cryopumps.
"We can save more than 400 million dollars if we manufacture all the different pumps the country needs for oil, gas and petrochemical projects," he said.
Cryopumps are vacuum pumps that trap gases and vapors by condensing them on a cold surface. They are only effective on some gases, depending on the freezing and boiling points of the gas relative to the cryopump’s temperature.
“Cryopumps stay afloat 40 meters deep in LPG (liquid petroleum gas) storage tanks in South Pars gas field,” Pourvand noted, adding that these pumps can function inside liquid propane and butane even at extremely low temperatures, “and that’s why they are produced through a complicated design process.” He said that Iran is now among the only four countries who own the technology for making cryopumps. The IIP will unveil the first batch of cryopumps next week and will send them to Assalouyeh for being used in the South Pars Phases 17 and 18, Pourvand told reporters. The company has signed contracts for supplying a wide range of industrial pumps for South Pars projects.
