Salvage Baltic Ace
THE SITUATION
On Dec. 5, 2012, the car carrier Baltic Ace sank in the North Sea after a collision with a container ship. Within 15 minutes, the car carrier with more than 1,400 cars on board sank.
The wreck was located some 65 kilometers off the coast, in the middle of one of the busiest international shipping lanes. In addition to being a danger to shipping, the cars and oil on board the wreck posed a risk to the environment. Rijkswaterstaat decided to salvage the wreck in its entirety.
The contract for this was awarded to Boskalis and Mammoet Salvage. Not long after, Smit Salvage, a subsidiary of Boskalis, knocked on B+BTec's door.
THE SALVAGE PROCESS
For the complete salvage of the Baltic Ace, some 550,000 liters of fuel oil first had to be removed after which the ship could be cut into 8 separate pieces using a wire saw system and lifted to the surface.
For the lifting operations, Ø600 and 800 mm holes had to be drilled through the steel ship's hull at a depth of 35 meters. B+BTec designed and manufactured the hydraulic core drilling machine Karat® 800-Hydr for this purpose in a short period of time. During testing of the machine (see pictures above) with HiSpeed Segmented Core Bits, penetrating 20 mm steel including steel trusses of approx. 10 cm proved no problem at all.
PROJECT PARTNERS
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