The Design and Engineering of the 187 km Khouribga to Jorf Lasfar Phosphate Slurry Pipeline

The Jorf Lasfar phosphate slurry pipeline in Morocco, commissioned in April 2014, is one of the world's largest slurry pipelines. The pipeline receives phosphate ore from the El Halassa, MEA and Daoui wash plants situated up to 22 km away. The product from these plants varies in grade and quality and is stored in separate agitated slurry tanks at the Khouribga head station. From the head station the slurry is pumped 187 km in batches separated by water to the terminal station at Jorf Lasfar. As these batches of phosphate slurry arrive at the terminal station they are diverted to dedicated storage tanks that feed separate process streams in the refinery. This means that the pipeline design needs to accommodate the slurry transport requirements of the different batches and to be able identify where these batches are during transport so as to ensure they are allocated to the appropriate tanks. As the batches are intermittent and have variable flow properties the design needs to accommodate a wide range of operating conditions. This is achieved by controlling the pipeline operation by varying the pumping head and through a series of pressure monitoring stations and a choke station at the terminal. Due to the scale of the project the system comprises some of the largest slurry handling equipment yet produced and this presented many unique challenges for the engineering team that required an innovative approach to solving such unique problems. This paper presents a few of the design and engineering challenges faced by the engineering team responsible for successfully delivering this project.