Page 59: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2024)

58 60

Photo by Rune Havn

Installing the Izomax AOGV (Add-On Gate Valve) on a test stand in the workshop. cally different. Operating directly on the ?ange meant hesitant to share the process until it was more mature. So, coming up with a method to separate the ?ange and in- I spent the next years mulling this problem, on and off. sert a device that mechanically blocks the ?ow through the Mostly while spending time at my cabin in the mountains pipe, isolating one side of the device (and the contents in of scenic Telemark in Norway, chopping wood and hiking. the pipe) from the other. And it was how to do that separa- I would be drawing sketches on scraps of paper lying tion that eluded me for many years. around, trying to ?gure out a way to make the idea work,

The main challenge when separating a bolt circle on a then leaving it dormant for months at the time in between. ?ange on a live, pressurised system is the pressure within I ?nally ?gured it out one day in 2015, and I experienced the pipe. Depending on the pressure, the separation force physical reaction when it ?nally dawned on me. I remem- pushing the sections of pipe away from each other can be ber the hairs on neck standing on end as I had this pretty hundreds of tons. To loosen the bolts on the ?ange, I need- intense Eureka moment! Then I grabbed some cardboard ed to ?nd a way to both compress the ?ange so bolts could divider sheets from an old ring binder lying around and be loosened, and at the same time contain gas or liquid at made the very ?rst working prototype of the mechanism. pressure escaping through the loosened ?ange seal. With this in hand, I could approach a small circle of trust-

I understood that the idea was a radical one and was ed friends and colleagues to re?ne the principle.

september/october 2024 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 59