After a tedious period of continuous repair attempts on the installed systems, onboard both Jette and Charlotte Theresa, Herning shipping contacted KROHNE Skarpenord for a suggestion of a permanent fix to the installations. The shipowner has extensive experience with the CARGOMASTER® system and our company’s radar and other tank installations from previous newbuilding and retrofit installations on a number of their vessels.

Prior to making a technical and commercial proposal, two of our service engineers attended Jette Theresa for a survey. The target of the survey was to identify components that could be re-used in an upgrade, as well as to select the best suited equipment for each individual measuring task in order to minimize equipment cost and reduce installation time. While the report concluded that almost all of the existing sensors were unfit for the marine environment, savings were established in re-use of a large portion of cabling and protection pipes. Further savings were secured in the selection of a combination of non-contact radar and TDR for the cargo and slop tanks. Finally, good solutions were found in the design of adapters and trunk spool pieces to fit new sensors without hotwork on the coated cargo tanks. After study of the report, Herning decided to place order for retrofit of the entire systems.

All in all this is one of the most extensive retrofit jobs done by KROHNE Skarpenord, since it involved replacement of equipment “across the board”. In a recognition of this, Herning dispatched a team of engineers to visit the factory in Norway to go through the job step by step in order to minimize the risk of surprises during the installations.

Once the decision was made in late November, the delivery time had to be reduced to a minimum. The first installation was done on Charlotte Theresa in the beginning of December 2009, with Jette Theresa following in mid January 2010.

Installations was done in less than a week on both vessels, actually in only four working days for the second system. The working conditions were extreme with heavy winds and temperatures down to -10 degrees C. We would like to give special credit and thanks to Herning's personnel, CS Electric and Granly Marine for outstanding work despite the harsh conditions. Their efforts were crucial to the success of the job, and the quality of their services was rated "top notch" by our commissioning engineers.

After the first weeks of operation, both vessels have reported full satisfaction on the accuracy and reliability of the systems.

Photos from the installation: