Sener completes Almirante Izmar refit

Around 75% of the vessel’s lower structures from the hull, decks and superstructures aft were severely or “totally” affected by the fire. Pipes, fittings and auxiliary equipment, ventilation ducts, cable trays, cables laid and distribution panels located aft were also completely ruined or heavily damaged.

On top of this, all the main and auxiliary diesel generators were lost, as well the main and secondary distribution cabinets and the emergency generator.

Almirante Irizar’s electric propulsion engines and the auxiliary propulsion equipment suffered minor damage, caused by the smoke and high temperatures, while the outer shell and wing tanks, and the accommodation did not suffer any damage.

The scope of the refit project included refurbishment and enlargement of accommodation areas, to fit up to 313 people, enlargement of the research area onboard to provide a total of 400m² as well as an enlargement of the liquid cargo capacity to 650m³ and the cargo hold capacity to 930 tonnes for dry cargo and 120m³ for refrigerated cargo.

For the refit, new structures were connected to original ones, as were pipes and auxiliary structures. This required more than 1,500 hours of measuring onboard for a newly developed CAD 3D model using Sener’s FORAN V60R3.0 CAD/CAM system.

The company modelled and renovated 12,000m of pipe, 2,500m of electric cable trays and 2,250m of HVAC ducts.

Sener says one of the most challenging aspects of the refit project was preparing the vessel for the IMO and SC rules, due to major changes in classification rules since the vessel was originally built back in 1978.

Sener is a private engineering and technology group founded in 1956, with more than 5,500 workers at its centres in Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, Chile, China, Columbia, the UAE, Spain, United Spain, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and the UK.