Cold Cutting in Volatile Areas

Why Cold Cutting?

The abrasive cold cutting process is one of the safest methods for cutting pipes, plates, and structures within hazardous environments such the Oil and Gas Industries

The process was developed in the USA to provide Demolition and Decommissioning Companies with a safer method to perform entry cutting, tank & pipe cutting and structural demolition on offshore oil & gas rigs and mainland petrochemical sites

A pivotal innovation involved the introduction of fine garnet into the cutting process. enabling pressures to be lowered whilst delivering the final cut to the surface. The Garnet, along with significant engineering improvements to the manipulators, delivered a safer more flexible system, with the capabilities of performing ever more technical cuts.

Case Study

Abrasive Cold Cutting of Volatile Pressure Vessels on a Chemical Site

This Cold-Cutting Project required the decommissioning of a series of pressure-vessel used for storing chemical based liquids. The volatility of the chemicals stored made Cold-Cutting the safest procedure of choice in order to minimise the risk of explosion.

Gnat UK removed the top of the vessel using ultra high pressure hydro abrasive cutting equipment with track-based manipulators to accurately guide the Cold Cutting Heads

Any remaining chemical residue was then removed by Hazardous Waste Removal Specialists and the Bunded Area Environmentally Cleaned and Decontaminated

Our Cold Cutting team were then able to complete the deconstruction, cold-cutting the vessel into manageable sections to facilitate safe removal from the work area by crane.

Whilst the process is necessarily slow and painstaking -often compared to ‘watching paint dry!’ - Cold-Cutting remains the indispensable go-to procedure when it comes to safe, accurate de-construction in and around Volatile environments!