People who spend any time around the world's ports and river estuaries are familiar with the sight of a cutter suction dredger working to maintain adequate depths in the navigation channels.
Typically, these suction dredgers will be attached to the shore via a long umbilical of piping that takes the dredged material to a shore site where it can be utilised or trucked to another site.
IHC Merwede offers a supplement to this system for use with their suction dredgers.
Their booster station contains a powerful Cummins-powered pump that can propel the dredged material much farther than can be achieved with the use of only the main dredger pump. This dramatically increases the amount of pipe and the range over which the suction dredger can function. As the dredged material is transferred by pipeline, there are significant savings in time and cost over a conventional dredger and barges.
Depending on the site, the booster pump can be located on land or on water to offer the optimum advantage to the dredging operation. In one instance, a Chinese dredger added a booster station and increased the allowable length of the discharge pipe from 7,000 metres to 11,500 metres.
IHC Merwede chose a Cummins QSK60-M diesel generating 1,641kW of pumping power to meet the power demands of the booster station.
