GEA do Brasil, located in Franco da Rocha, São Paulo, has won an order for the design, construction and delivery of 56 shell-and-tube heat exchangers with a total value of approximately $27.2 million (€20 million).

The client is QGI Oil & Gas, a consortium of the two Brazilian engineering companies Queiroz Galvão and Iesa Oil & Gas. The shell-and-tube heat exchangers from GEA do Brasil will be installed on two identical floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) platforms. Each platform will be responsible for the offshore extraction of 150,000 barrels of deep sea crude oil per day as well as for the offshore extraction of 150,000 barrels of deep sea crude oil per day as well as 7,000 m³ of natural gas. The complete FPSO platforms P75 and P77 have been ordered from QGI Oil & Gas by the Dutch subsidiary of the Brazilian oil-and-gas company Petrobras.

The heat exchangers will be installed in the CO₂ compression, exportation gas compression, main gas compression, gas injection, oil processing, produced water treatment and utilities modules of the FPSOs.

The huge Brazilian “pre-salt” oil fields are situated about 185 miles (300 km) from the continental coast, up to 3.73 miles (6,000 m) under the water surface of the ocean, and they are covered by a thick layer of salt. The exploration of these oil reserves is technically very challenging and faces enormous pressures and high temperatures during the extraction and separation process in the FPSOs. This requires specially designed equipment and special materials.

GEA do Brasil will build these heat exchangers using corrosion-resistant alloys. They are designed specifically for the high operation pressures and temperatures of this project.