UT-1 Trencher Lays the Fattest Pipe in the Deepest Places

Video Link: http://youtu.be/ck8rTorxRu0



[via youtube]

The UT-1 is the worlds most powerful jetting ROV with 2.1MW of total power. It is also fitted with sophisticated drive motors, which allow precise control of pressure and flow, giving a high degree of control and flexibility when undertaking subsea workscopes in varied environmental conditions.



The UT-1 can provide rapid installation of flexible flowlines and submarine cables using its bell mouth and cable capture tool, whilst its upgraded swords allow jetting performance exceeding any other jet trencher currently in the market place.



With an extensive track record, the UT-1 is configurable for a wide range of applications including trenching of pipelines through to the installation of submarine cables in varying seabed conditions.



The ROV is suited to the offshore Oil and Gas, Life of Field Seismic, Telecommunications, E-field, Power and Renewables markets.



The UT-1 is permanently installed on the multi-role subsea construction vessel, Volantis, with a state-of-the-art heave compensated launch and recovery system, which includes a submersible latch beam, cursor and high speed constant tension winches.

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The world record for deepest dive using Scuba gear stands at 330m. Impressive, but when laying transatlanic telecommunication lines 2000m down, leave the humans on the surface and send in an ROV Trencher.

An ROV is an unoccupied underwater vehicle tethered via an umbilical cable to a surface vessel. This cable transmits data, video and images from the ROV back to the ship while powering the submersible and transmitting control input from the pilot. The pilot's station closely resembles one for military drones—the unit's movement, camera and other functions are controlled via joystick.

ROVs were originally developed by the US Navy back in the 1960s to perform rescue and recovery missions too deep for human divers to reach, like in 1966 when the military "misplaced" a nuclear bomb in the Mediterranean after the B-52 carrying it crashed. In the 1980s, ROVs played an integral part in the expansion of deep-ocean offshore oil production. Since then, the scope and scale of ROV applications has exploded, and they're now used in a variety of military, scientific and commercial settings—most extensively in the oil and natural gas mining industry.

ROVs used for trenching, the process of protecting telecommunication cables and pipelines by burying them under the seabed, are the largest and deepest-diving class of ROV, often working at depths of 3000m or more. To create a trench, the ROV navigates to the seafloor where the cable has already been placed. It positions itself straddling the cable, then deploys a pair of high-pressure water jets (also known as "jet swords") on either side. These inject water into the strata causing it to "fluidize," loosening it and allowing the cable to sink in.

The most massive trencher class behemoth is the UT-1 Ultra Trencher, built by CTC Marine. It is, quite simply, gigantic. Weighing over 60 tons, it measures over 9 meters long, nearly 8 meters wide, and 7.5 meters tall. The UT-1 draws a massive 2100 megawatts (making it the most powerful jet trencher ever) and can direct as much as 1500 megawatts of that to the forward "jet swords," gouging out a slot 2.5 meters deep and up to 1 meter wide. It's so big and so powerful, in fact, that it can deploy in weather and sea conditions that would ground lesser submersibles. Equally enormous? The pricetag: It costs over $16 million.

[Tricore Marine - ROV World - ROV Exchange - ROV Wiki - ZDNet - SMD]

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