Hot tapping gas pipework at food production facility
Client: MCL Energy, on behalf of ABN Northallerton
About: MCL Energy are contractors for food producers, ABN in Northallerton. ABN required modifications to their gas pipework, and MCL called in Ormond Pipework Services Ltd as a sub-contractor.
The problem: ABN needed to upgrade the gas supply to feed their boilers.
To avoid costly downtime, interrupting the gas supply was not feasible.
Therefore, Ormond Pipework Services were brought in to perform a live tapping on ABN’s gas main.
Our solution: Hot tapping (under pressure drilling) is the process of drilling into live pipe systems in order to form a new branch connection.
Our commercial gas engineers welded a 1.5” on 6” steel branch to the existing pipework.
After a successful pressure test, we began to drill into the live gas main.
Once the hot tapping was complete, a safety plug was attached to the valve.
Hot tapping avoids shutdowns to production, which saves time and expense.
Tasks involved:
Live tapping on steel pipe
Welding
