PT Bonna Indonesia supplies 7km of reinforced concrete pressure pipes for Bangladesh power plant

PT Bonna Indonesia, a specialist provider of Reinforced Concrete steel Cylinder Pipes (RCCP) and a subsidiary of Consolis,
a European leader in precast concrete solutions, is providing 7 kilometers of custom-made “Bonna Pipes” for the $4.5 billion 1.2 GW power station being built at Matarbari, Bangladesh.

PT Bonna Indonesia, a specialist provider of Reinforced Concrete steel Cylinder Pipes (RCCP) and a subsidiary of Consolis, a European leader in precast concrete solutions, is providing 7 kilometers of custom-made “Bonna Pipes”, designed in France and produced in Indonesia, for the $4.5 billion 1.2 GW power station being built at Matarbari, Bangladesh.

A global alliance to build the Matarbari power plant

Bangladesh, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, has become a major global manufacturing hub. The country’s energy consumption grew at 85% between 2008 and 2018, leading to the need to build a new power station to augment the country’s electricity generation capacity.

Conceived in 2011 and due to be completed in 2024, the Matarbari Ultra-Supercritical Power Plant in the Cox‘s Bazar District in south-eastern Bangladesh will generate 1,200 MW (2x600), which is more than the average nuclear reactor (900 MW). 

The plant is being developed by the state-owned Coal Power Generation Company Bangladesh, and represents an investment of $4.5bn, which is partly financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

A consortium of Japanese companies - Sumitomo, Toshiba and IHI - was awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the project in August 2017.

Posco E&C awards water cooling piping system contract to PT Bonna Indonesia

Consolis Bonna Indonesia was contracted in April 2017 to design and manufacture reinforced concrete cylinder pipes (RCCP) to supply the power station with seawater for the cooling water system (offshore intake line, onshore intake and discharge lines), the Flue Gas Desulfurization system and the intake line of a new desalination plant.

The intake pipes, which have an internal diameter of up to 4.00 meters, stretch from the power station out into the Bay of Bengal and pull in seawater from Bonna precast intake towers using gravitational forces, which is then pumped through to condensers where it absorbs excess heat from the plant’s steam circuit. Once the sea water has heated up, it is transferred to a cooling tank, then allowed to flow back into the sea once the temperature is low enough to not impact marine ecosystems.

The Matarbari Power Plant will require a vast amount of seawater for its cooling system, which is why the RCCP pipes custom-built for the project have an internal diameter of 4.00 meters, the largest Bonna Pipes ever designed and manufactured by PT Bonna Indonesia and Consolis Group.

PT Bonna Indonesia’s biggest engineering project to date

Located at Bogor, 30km south of Jakarta, PT Bonna Indonesia is the leading provider of complete technical solutions for water piping system in South-East Asia with its unique “Bonna Pipes”. These Reinforced Concrete Cylinder Pipes (RCCP) are the company’s flagship product. They are an evolution of the original 1894 design by the French engineer Aimé Bonna, and Bonna Pipes have been the industry standard for pressure pipes ever since.

Special features of “Bonna Pipes” are their high mechanical strength to deal with internal pressure and external stresses, to resist to severe environments with long-term performance.

The concrete has a compressive strength of more than 40 MPa and thanks to the passivation of the steel as a result of its concrete mantle, and the use of Type-V self-resistant cement (SRC), it gives them excellent corrosion resistance in a sea water environment without the need of any further cathodic protection.

“We have over a century return of experience with the Bonna Pipes that are the optimum combination of concrete and steel characteristics,” said Bonna Indonesia Strategy & Business Development Manager Julien Chassagnevirol.  “We design these pipes to meet with infrastructure life span and they last much longer.”

A complete engineering solution

Aside from cooling water piping systems for the energy sector, PT Bonna Indonesia supplies any kind of special fittings along with its pipes to meet the most complex water piping circuit for other industries such as mining, oil and gas production, to the water and wastewater sector, and also to petrochemical and chemical industries.

Unlike most of its competitors, PT Bonna Indonesia does not only manufacture pipes but also offers a complete technical solution including the design and supply.

“Every single pipe is custom-made according to the project specifications”, said Julien Chassagnevirol. “This solution includes planning and design services as well full engineering studies, complete installation instructions and further services including on-site advisory.”

Reliable and easy to install, the RCCPs were specially designed and manufactured for the Matarbari project by a team of Indonesian and French engineers. In total, the delivery includes around 7 km of pipes and special fittings, which represents around 2,300 precast products.

Global Project Management at the height of the Covid19 pandemic

Ahead of signing the contract, Consolis’ French engineers and designers drew up initial plans and design review, taking into account Bangladesh’s poor soil quality and seismic risk of this area, proposing a robust customized solution featuring the biggest RCCP pipes ever made by PT Bonna Indonesia.

 “The completeness of the proposed engineering solution was a deciding factor in awarding Bonna Indonesia the contract in April 2020, after which the detailed design phase kicked in, moving rapidly to the manufacturing of the bespoke pipes in Indonesia,” Julien Chassagnevirol added.

Delivered to Jakarta Port and loaded into break-bulk vessels, the first batch of pipes was shipped to Bangladesh in September 2020, with final delivery expected in January 2022. Since then, an average of 5,000 m3 of products have been delivered each month.

All this was done at the height of the Covid19 crisis, which added its own logistical challenges. The Matarbari project is the group’s first contract negotiated entirely over Microsoft Teams, across multiple time-zones (Bangladesh, Korea, Indonesia and France).

Continued growth in Indonesia and South-East Asia

While the core business of PT Bonna Indonesia remains cooling water systems for power plants, the company is looking to meet another huge challenge in South East Asia, notably the water transmission infrastructure needs for the supply of drinking water, which were one of the first applications of Bonna Pipes in France in the early 20th century.

PT Bonna Indonesia has signed an initial agreement for the Jatiluhur Drinking Water Supply System (SPAM) project, which will deliver drinking water to the growing urban population of Jakarta. The first Bonna Pipes are expected to be manufactured and laid in the second half of 2021.

About Bonna Indonesia
Bonna set up its Indonesian operations in 1993, when it was created to respond to the market needs in South-East Asia and established a manufacturing plant to avoid shipping French-designed products all the way from Europe. PT Bonna Indonesia is a joint venture between the European Group Consolis and the main private Indonesian concrete Precast company Dusaspun.
 
What is the Bonna Indonesia Reinforced Concrete Steel Cylinder Pipe?
» A Reinforced Concrete Steel Cylinder Pipe is composed of:
» A steel cylinder core with end-rings
» A steel reinforcement cage
» A double highly compacted concrete coating casted in one single operation
 
Key figures of the Bangladesh Project: 
» Biggest Bonna Pipes of 4.00 meters internal
diameter (4.7 meters external diameter)
» Self-restrained conical jointing to ease installation
» Pipes between 2.00 meters and 6.15 meters long
» 2 precast Intake Towers of more than 300 tons each delivered in kit & easy assembled at site
» 80,000 m3 of product, total weight 42,000 tons
» 2,300 precast products (units delivered)
» Total length of 7 kilometers 
» The intake pipelines (4.00 meters) can transmit up to 37,500 liters of seawater per second
» 1 shipment per month by break-bulk vessel
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