I thought I would do a piece on the infrastructure of the station, building and operating in the Antarctic area is a lot different from general construction in Australia.
The construction processes and design are somewhere along the lines of cyclonic, however with consistent winds in Winter of around 50-60 knots gusting to around 120-130 knots even these are tested, so over the past 40 years the AAD has designed and built various styles with the most robust being the ANBUS design first done in the 80's.
All the site services are located above the ground so not to freeze, the pipes are insulated and are a mix of copper and PDHP, they are currently fazing out the copper piping in favour of poly which is much more robust.
The power houses also heat the water which circulates around the station supplying the heating to the buildings, there is a back up boiler in various locations around the station to keep the temperature constant between 64 and 68 deg celsius, if the power was to shut down in Winter we have approx 40mins to get teh EPH fired up before site services will start to freeze which would be catastrophic to the station, so it is critical that the focus is on the MPH and EPH.
I have also included some pics of our power house and emergency power house, these are of course the backbone of the station, we run a main power house with 4 Caterpillar engines and generators each capable of around 150kw, generally they are run to achieve no more than 130kw.
The majority of time in Summer due to the workload 3 motors will run in sequence in Winter we should drop back to only 2. Running the motors in sequence allows servicing to take place, this is carried out every 250 hours so the Dieso's are servicing motors everyday. One Dieso is dedicated to the MPH everyday except Sunday, Ops are undertaken throughout the day until 8.00pm at night.
First job at the start of Summer is major servicing of teh MPH, this is undertaken over a 2 week period in this time the EPH (emergency power house) is fired up it consists of only 2 Cat motors of the same vintage as the MPH, so additional mobile generators are located at various RMU's (ring main units) around the station.
I have also included a pic of the Carpenters workshop, it is well equiped with a variety of saws, table, band, radial arm ect. a lathe drill stand ect ect.
Emergency Power house generators
Emergency power house, main switch board
EPH back up boiler and pump set up
MPH motors and generators, the boiler is located at the far end just out of view.
Pumps used to circulate the water
Site services running from MPH to the Services building, each pipe also has a heat trace fitted which is back up to stop the water freezing.
We have 12 x 90,000 litre storage tanks on site for diesel, this allows approx 18 months fuel supply of Antarctic blend fuel.
Some of the spare insulated piping with copper pipe.
Site Services showing the heat trace isolation boxes.
Site services leading back to the LQ and SMQ
Site services leading back up to the MPH past RMU 1 (the blue box on the left)
Fire pump which is located in the Services building, the blue tanks in teh background are storage tanks for our potable water and fire fighting water.
All water on station is made from salt water using Reverse Osmosis, we currently have 1.3 mil litre capacity on station, although the ADD is building a further storage tank which will have about 600,000 litre capacity. The Antarctic is the largest desert in the world, fresh water is limited and the station is on restrictions all year round. Here at davis, water used to be created by melting snow however this was found to be very ineffective and costly.
New tank foundations completed this Summer, the machines are heaters required for approx 48hrs after a pour to keep the concrete warm to allow for curing, the blue sheets are heat blankets
MPH switch boards and distribution boards.
