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World Record: SPINNER Releases a 109-Channel Fiber-Optic Rotary Joint

SPINNER has enlarged its portfolio of fiber-optic rotary joints with a new record-setting version with no fewer than 109 channels. This new model is ideally suited for use in offshore and FPSO  applications (see below) while delivering clear competitive advantages.

The large number of individual passive channels does away with the need for active multiplexers, thus significantly improving overall system reliability and life expectancy. It also greatly reduces or even eliminates the need for laborious checking, verification, and documentation with safety certificates for software and active components.

SPINNER rotary joints meet extremely demanding requirements with their robustness, long service life, outstanding performance, and reliable transmission and have therefore become must-haves in many of the world’s mining regions. Appropriately, they are available with IP65 or IP50 ingress protection.

Also unique are their consistently extremely low insertion loss (IL) and insertion loss variation during rotation (IL WOW) values. This applies to all models, regardless of their channel count. It’s achieved by modeling a five-dimensional paraboloid.

One major use is for meeting the extreme challenges that the oil and gas industry faces to extract petroleum and natural gas in offshore and open ocean areas. Highly robust materials are a must in  extreme environmental conditions such as wind and waves, saltwater and aggressive chemicals, cold and heat, and enormous water pressures.

A variety of stationary and floating systems are used to extract and process crude oil and pump it into tankers. So-called FPSO (for “floating production storage and offloading”) units are preferred in frontier regions since they are versatile and easy to deploy and don’t require a pipeline infrastructure. They are floating vessels for processing hydrocarbons and temporarily storing oil or natural gas on site. They carry the same equipment as conventional drilling platforms but in many cases are a more flexible and cost-effective choice.

Oil is brought up from wells on the seafloor to the surface via pipes and hoses supported by floating buoys, passing through them to extraction towers that can be mounted on the bow or stern of an FPSO or installed inside it. Since these vessels are pushed around by wind, waves and currents, the towers need to be able to rotate and have flexible connections.

While oil and gas are being brought up, electricity, signals, and data for control or measurement purposes are transmitted in both directions. SPINNER supplies systems for hybrid couplings in which sliprings designed for high voltages and currents are combined with fiber-optic rotary joints.

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