London underground

Our cement system operating panel, not as complicated as it looks lol. We use this to transfer dry cement up to the cement unit where it gets mixed and then pumped down the well if we need to cement in casing or to plug the well (we call this a cement job).

We have 5 cement tanks (or silos) that we use, the 5 white circles, the red line is the discharge line from the tanks to the cement mixing hopper (the small white circle to the right where the red line ends). The orange line is the "fill" line that we use to load the dry cement into the tanks from a supply vessel. The blue line is the tank venting line and the yellow line is the rig air supply.

The thinner white line with the squiggles is the purge line, this is basically a line that comes from the main air line and into the fill/ discharge line. We use this to keep the dry cement moving and to keep the lines clear. The switches are just valves that can be opened or closed.

The tanks get pressurized to around 60 psi, (hence the guages) and it's the flow of air (once the discharge line is opened) that allows us to move the dry cement around.

It's a pretty critical operation and it has to go smoothly as the cement has a set time before it goes hard so if the transfer lines block up during a "cement job" and the flow is interupted it can lead to a failed job. When we are not using it the system is continually being checked and, if required, repaired to ensure it runs as it should.