How to Increase the Capacity of an Existing Sea Water Intake

Sea Water Intakes supplying water for desalination, cooling systems, or other parts of many important industrial components, such as refineries, and power plants are usually built in the shore lines and close to the target systems. In some conditions, such as expansion of the refinery, or other plants and in order to avoid building a new sea water intake because of lack of the suitable land or expending a lot of money, it is required to enhance the amount of withdrawing water and increase the capacity of the existing sea water intake. In such conditions, several important factors such as, minimum required submergence depth for the pumps, maximum allowed current velocity at the entry of the suction chambers, maximum allowed current velocity inside the intake and near the filters, and the flow pattern should be checked. In this paper, it is tried to describe these factors and restrictions. In addition, a case study sea water intake located in South Pars Gas Field at the northern shore line of the Persian Gulf in the province of Boushehr, Iran, is considered and the mentioned factors and restrictions for increasing the capacity of sea water intake from 25,000 to 35,000 is discussed. Besides, a hydraulic mathematical model has been used to check the flow line of the developed system. At the end the results are discussed.