High-purity olivine is an incredibly versatile mineral, used across a wide range of industrial and environmental applications. This includes offshore wind, where Sibelco OLIDENSE is used as a high-density ballast material to stabilise the foundations of giant turbines.
OLIDENSE was recently used in the construction of Equinor’s Hywind Tampen, the world’s largest offshore floating wind farm of 11 giant turbines with an installed capacity of 88 MW. The turbines will provide electricity to the Snorre and Gullfaks offshore fields in the Norwegian North Sea.
Construction of 11 floating concrete hulls to carry the wind turbines was just one of the challenges assigned to Equinor’s contractor Aker Solutions. To achieve the right draft and stability of the floating foundations, Aker Solutions chose OLIDENSE as material for ballasting.
A total of 82,000 tonnes of OLIDENSE was delivered to the project via 15 shipments from our plant in Åheim to the installation site at Dommersnes (Norway). The material needed to be delivered within a short timeframe over the summer holiday period, but our team pulled out all the stops to ensure that each ship was prioritised and loaded on time, ensuring no disruptions to the construction schedule.
OLIDENSE performed exactly as expected, providing the correct weight ratio to stabilise the foundations of Hywind Tampen’s 11 floating turbines, supported throughout by Sibelco’s technical specialists and operations team.
Photo credit: Ole Jørgen Bratland @Equinor
