Supporting the Diesel Storage Program in 2023/2024, buried firewater ring main extension and ancillary firefighting equipment were required. Novafast was engaged by VIVA Energy to deliver a design and construct pressure buried firewater ring main around three, 30-million-litre diesel storage tanks in the Geelong Refinery.

The initial stages of the project had Dennis Southam and Associates providing a piping specification, along with completing a detailed design and pipeline stress analysis. Once this was completed, Novafast manufactured all pipes and fittings locally at our Industry 4.0 Australian Manufacturing facility located in Kilkenny, South Australia. Novafast then completed the site installation component, including GRE piping installation, surveying, and commissioning on site at the Geelong Refinery.

Dennis Southam & Associates (DSA) provided the design and engineering resources as part of the group’s in-house project strategy.

The design started with Detailed Component Design based on Shell DEP 31.40.10.19 and ISO 14692.

Once the component design was completed the team then moved this into 3D pipeline modelling using Inventor and Plant 3D. The 3D modelling enabled the team to create a comprehensive Bill of Materials (BOM) for pipe fabrication.

Once the modelling was completed, our engineering team completed seismic calculations, assessment of soil properties, restrictions to battery limits and detailed analysis of 17 different load cases making up the Pipeline Stress Analysis using Caesar II software. This was crucial for the project execution; by running the stress analysis in-house, the team was able to identify where the areas of high stress in the pipeline would occur. This allowed the team to design the line in such a way as to minimise these stresses and alert the site construction team to these areas on site.

Piping Isometrics were then delivered as an output from the stress analysis along with a set of 3D Construction Drawings for installation.

Novafast’s product, NovaFlo 2000M™ IMO Fire Resistant GRE pipe and fittings with taper bonded connections, was manufactured using Industry 4.0 Manufacturing including Novafast’s PLC Winding Technology and 7-axis Robotic Winding Technology & 6-axis Robotic Processing Technology.

Following ISO14692-2 Manufacturing & Qualification along with SHELL DEP 31.40.10.19, Novafast provided a comprehensive Manufacturing Data Record (MDR) package consisting of Novafast’s Quality Management System (QMS). This included extensive batch material tracing, manufacturing logs including product identification, measurement traceability, visual inspection, in-house non-destructive testing (NDT) & destructive testing (DT) following the standards, and a submission with a Novafast Certificate of Conformance (COC) to the client.

NovaFlo 2000M™ is backed by extensive qualification testing data and 3rd party verified by Bureau Veritas (BV), giving our customers the comfort of a product backed by years of in-field service and project history.

Novafast completed the GRE piping installation and as-built survey of the buried firewater ring main extension in 9 construction stages for the greenfields Geelong Refinery, including a tie-in into brownfields with the use of adhesively bonded joints, butt & wrap joints, and flange connections. Novafast provided another submission post site installation for the construction build following Novafast’s QMS of install ITP’s outlining 3D construction jointing as-builts drawings along with survey as-builts post construction. Extensive jointing records with bonder certification were provided, including visual inspections of the pipeline following ISO14692-4 & SHELL DEP 31.40.10.19.

Novafast completed 9 sections of hydrostatic testing, including integrity (strength) tests at 1.5x design pressure at 2.4MPa for a minimum of 4 hours followed by leak-tightness test held for a minimum of 24 hours before handing over the GRE pipeline to the client.