May 2009 Vol. 236 No. 5

TechNotes

Brazilian Company Offers Engineering Solutions

Liderroll is a 100% Brazilian private company, founded by engineer Paulo Roberto Gomes Fernandes, who works as CEO. Headquarters are in Rio de Janeiro with a plant in the municipality of Duque de Caxias and a sales office in Houston.

During his nearly 20 years as a Petrobras employee, Fernandes worked in several departments including Exploration and Production, Refining and Engineering – that often required engineering solutions.

He founded Liderroll, a unique engineering company offering permanent solutions to cut pipeline construction downtime, metal structures and industrial process plant construction time, aaving thousands of dollars through thorough application engineering.

Another very important philosophy he has incorporated into all Liderroll projects is the useful operating life of every piece of equipment and parts, and to eliminate as much as possible the need for human manpower, both in the assembly and in the operation of the system in order to prevent accidents.

“Our goal is for our systems and parts to work for periods of not less than 15 years without maintenance intervention, which provides a guaranteed reliability and low operating cost,” says Fernandes.

Liderroll has two very interesting characteristics:

1. It visits the client’s manufacturing plant, identifies the client’s needs or chronic problems of the client’s units and, after securing a confidentiality agreement and commitment to purchase the solution to be generated, all projects are started at no cost to the client.

2. After the first phase, Liderroll always produces a prototype of the piece of equipment or part that will solve the problem, also at no cost to the client. Only after Liderroll is sure it has the solution, the sale and final application is made to the system.

In view of this provision, it generally requires the patent of all its solutions.

The most recent patent of Liderroll, registered in more than 50 countries, is the system of handling and construction of pipelines 6″ to 64″ in diameter in closed environments (congested plants and tunnels) where all of the pipes are welded through an automatic welding process outside the tunnel, with the laying of the line for more than 12.8 km over its plastic and high-performance driving rollers, made of TSACET-VD-1808 KAMT (RPAP®), which is attached to the sidewalls of the tunnel with a fully circular section of 5.2 m in diameter.

This technology, developed and patented by Liderroll, will reduce the time of construction of the gas pipeline to 10 months, save millions in direct cost as well as concentrate in a single place (the external mouth of the tunnel), all the operations of reception of the pipes, inspections of execution, welding, sandblasting, painting, contract inspection, quality inspection, first-aid, cafeteria, stockroom and logistics.

There will be no activity of transportation of pipes, assembly and welding of pipes inside the tunnel. Generation of toxic gases and vapors will not be accumulated in bubbles inside the closed environment, which will obviously reduce the risks of accidents.

This new solution is already being used in the Petrobras GASDUC III pipeline project. This is 4.1 km and will connect the region of Macaé to the Duque de Caxias refinery in Rio de Janeiro (REDUC) using a very large-diameter pipe (38″ of diameter X 0.875″ of thickness).

Another project with a Liderroll solution involves submarine pipelines that launch cradle structures for deep waters through a device known as a “stinger”. Liderroll is participating in the development with the Dutch company GustoMSC, both in the definition of the modular structures and in the project of the rollers for sliding the pipes. The final client is Petrobras Brazil.

Liderroll is constantly searching to apply new materials (fibers, plastics, ceramics, composites and the latest structural geometries). In addition, it always has exclusivity in the production of all solutions it designs.

Liderroll is considering a recent offer from the Province of Alberta, Canada to open an office in Calgary and has sent a team for the negotiations and subsequent opening.

Cutline

Paulo Roberto Gomez Fernandes founded Liderroll.