Claycutting pioneer Marin Group unveils next generation excavator
Subsea excavation specialist Marin Group has launched the next generation of claycutting tools, taking route preparation technology to a significantly higher level.
The Evo Claycutting system ¾ developed and operated by UK-based Marin Group company Marin Subsea ¾ is more powerful, more versatile and much faster to deploy than earlier claycutting equipment and features a unique “plug and play” capability offering users increased flexibility.
Behind the new tools and their application are the pioneers of mass flow excavation and claycutting, Nick Sills and Marin Group CEO George (Boris) Stroud, the team responsible for developing the world’s first claycutter system ¾ launched commercially in 1994 ¾ and landmark MFE technology including the Remote Underwater Excavator (RUE), JetProp, HydroDigger, and SeaVator.
Their latest design forms part of the Marin Evo Excavation System, a suite of complementary equipment linking key advances in technology with proven tooling to mark an important benchmark in MFE and subsea intervention.
With the Evo Claycutting system, Marin Group is superseding all previous approaches with features that include:
- “Plug and play” capability, allowing use with the client’s pumping choice across the full range of rig pumps, flooding pumps, injection pumps, well intervention pumps, vessel construction pumps, and fracture vessels, under the direction of Marin’s expert claycutting team
- New Bladejet cutting system that allows a more efficient cut into the clay, with greater cutting ability, reduced wash-out potential and less impact damage
- Fluid Dynamex design
- Project-by-project bespoke configuration to suit all clay soils
- Deployment by drill string, high-pressure hose, Coflexip Dual systems, and electric pumping systems
- Deployment from dedicated handling tower or system, by wire, by tubular system, or subsea via ROV
- Interchangeable subsea system, allowing remote intervention for full reconfiguration without recovery to the surface
- Remote ROV intervention, with no need to recover tool to the surface for re-configuration
- Enhanced safety features.
The Evo Claycutter can be used at any depth below 2 metres for a wide range of applications, including template foundations, pipeline route preparation, silo construction, trench construction, rock dump and boulder clearance and stabilisation, route clearance, remedial relief sites, and keying.
Mr Sills said: “With the Evo Claycutting system, we have taken a significant step forward in the evolution of subsea excavation to deliver an even more powerful, robust and efficient system that can be used at any depth and in the most challenging and hostile of offshore environments.
“We invented this technique, and our new system represents the technology’s fifth generation, the result of detailed R&D and 30 years’ hands-on experience employing MFE and claycutting tooling to overcome the challenges posed by Ormen Lange and many other deepwater projects around the world.”
