Phoenix Journal · Extraction
Offshore installations, remote camps and working vessels run their galleys hard, in the least forgiving conditions there are. Here is how proper extraction cleaning keeps that hidden fire load under control.
Three hundred people to feed, twice over, on a platform where the nearest resupply boat is a day of weather away - and one extract fan standing between a busy galley and a very bad night.
Picture the scene at the change of shift. The fryers have been going since before first light, the griddle is glazed with a morning's worth of bacon fat, and the canopy above the range is pulling a steady haze of vaporised grease up into ductwork that runs God-knows-where through the accommodation module. Nobody in that galley is thinking about the inside of the duct. They are thinking about getting the next sitting out on time. That is exactly why the inside of the duct matters so much. In a self-contained industrial environment - an offshore installation, a remote works camp, a vessel at sea - the kitchen is not just a kitchen. It is a fixed fire load bolted into the middle of somewhere you cannot simply walk away from.
Catering in these settings carries a different weight to a high-street restaurant. The cooking is heavy, continuous and calorie-dense because the people eating it are doing hard physical work. The extraction runs hot for far longer each day. And the consequences of a grease fire are magnified by everything that makes the location remote in the first place: limited egress, a fixed population on board, and a fire service that is measured in helicopters and hours rather than minutes. Getting the extraction clean, and keeping it clean to a recognised standard, is one of the quieter but more important safety jobs on the whole facility.
A commercial kitchen on land is demanding enough. Move it out to an installation, a rig, a remote camp or a working vessel and almost every variable that drives grease build-up gets turned up at once. The cooking never really stops, the extract system is often long and convoluted because it has to thread through a compact module, and the surrounding air is warm and humid, which encourages deposits to settle and harden rather than stay mobile. You are running a heavy-duty system in the least forgiving conditions imaginable, and then asking it to do so without a break.
The defining feature of industrial catering is duty cycle. Where a restaurant kitchen might class as heavy use at twelve to sixteen hours a day, an offshore galley feeding a rolling shift pattern can effectively run around the clock. That single fact reshapes everything downstream. Grease is deposited faster, the layer thickens sooner, and the window between a clean duct and a hazardous one shrinks. Add the physical realities the marine and offshore guidance itself flags - wet and greasy decks, extreme temperatures and humidity, and congestion around the range and hot-plate area - and you have a workplace where extraction hygiene is inseparable from basic safety.
Space is the other constraint. On a fixed installation, ductwork is routed for the convenience of the structure, not the convenience of the cleaner. Runs are long, they change direction often, and they frequently pass through or above spaces where people sleep. That geometry is precisely why grease can accumulate unseen for months, and precisely why proper access is not optional.
Grease accumulation inside extract ductwork is one of the leading causes of commercial kitchen fires in the UK, with industry figures repeatedly attributing a large majority of them to fat and grease build-up in the extraction system rather than the cooking line itself. The danger is that this fuel is completely hidden. A canopy can look spotless while the horizontal duct above the ceiling carries a thick, flammable coating. When a flare-up at the range finds its way into that duct, you no longer have a contained cooking fire - you have a fire travelling inside a sealed steel channel that runs the length of the module. Offshore and remote-site safety guidance is blunt about it: greasy ventilation is a serious fire hazard, ducting must be accessible, and it must be cleaned regularly on the strength of a proper risk assessment. That is not a hospitality nicety. It is a structural safety requirement in an environment where the margin for error is unusually thin.
The good news is that there is a clear, recognised benchmark for how clean a kitchen extract system should be, and it applies just as well two hundred miles offshore as it does on land. The Building Engineering Services Association standard, TR19® Grease, sets out how systems are inspected, measured, cleaned and evidenced. Working to it turns a vague instruction - "keep the duct clean" - into something measurable, repeatable and defensible. In a remote catering operation, where the same discipline governs everything from food storage to helideck safety, an evidenced cleaning regime fits naturally into how the facility already runs.
TR19® Grease works on measured deposit levels rather than guesswork. Grease thickness inside the duct is assessed - typically using a wet film thickness test for soft deposits and a deposit thickness test for harder, carbonised build-up - and an average of around 200 microns is treated as the action level at which cleaning is required. Cleaning frequency is then set by usage: heavy use of twelve to sixteen hours a day points to roughly quarterly cleaning, moderate use to around six-monthly, and lighter use to annually. An offshore galley running beyond even the heavy-use band should sit at the demanding end of that scale, with intervals justified by measurement rather than habit.
Crucially, the standard also insists on access. Access panels are expected at regular intervals - broadly every couple of metres along the run and at every serviceable component - so the whole internal surface can actually be reached, cleaned and inspected. Retrofitting proper access to an existing offshore duct is often the single most valuable improvement you can make, because a system that cannot be reached cannot be proven clean, whatever the paperwork says.
Doing this work offshore is as much a logistics exercise as a cleaning one. Crews and equipment have to be mobilised by boat or helicopter, inducted to the site's permit-to-work and confined-space regimes, and scheduled around galley operations that cannot simply close for a day. A remote catering environment is unforgiving of anyone who turns up without the right competencies, so the planning matters as much as the scrubbing. The same care that governs food and water provision under the marine catering guidance, and the wider duty to keep ducting accessible and regularly cleaned, applies to the contractor walking through the airlock.
There is a commercial edge to all of this too. A properly evidenced TR19® regime is what your insurer expects to see. The standard is recognised by the Association of British Insurers and its members, and a policy can be challenged or invalidated where a business cannot demonstrate that its extraction system has been inspected and cleaned to an approved schedule. On a facility where a galley fire threatens not just a claim but the safety of everyone on board, the report at the end of the job is not administrative clutter. It is the proof that the fire load nobody sees is actually being kept in check. If you would like the same evidenced standard applied to your galley,
Questions
Frequency should be set by measured grease levels and real usage rather than a fixed calendar. Under TR19 Grease, heavy use of twelve to sixteen hours a day points to roughly quarterly cleaning, but an offshore galley running near-continuously usually warrants the shortest, most frequent schedule at the demanding end of that scale. The right interval is the one justified by wet film thickness readings and a proper risk assessment for your specific site.
Because the location magnifies every consequence. A remote installation has a fixed population on board, complex and weather-dependent evacuation, and no fire service that arrives in minutes. Grease build-up inside the duct is a hidden, flammable fuel load that can carry a fire through sealed steel channels running the length of the accommodation module, so prevention through regular, evidenced cleaning has to do the work that rapid suppression simply cannot.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
The right kit only helps if the system stays clean. Phoenix degreases canopies, filters and ductwork to TR19 Grease - UK-wide, overnight.