Mammoet performs complex shutdown in limited time with limited space
Mammoet, the world’s largest service provider specializing in engineered heavy lifting and transport, completed heavy lifting, transportation and rigging activities at Chevron South Africa in Cape Town for their annual scheduled maintenance.
Megchem, an engineering company operating primarily in the oil, gas, power generation and energy related industries, contracted Mammoet for the refurbishment of a 350-t reactor dome, replacement of a 400-t atmospheric column and 400-t heat exchanger.
The shutdown started on schedule on Feb. 10 and all components had to be replaced within 41 days. With the shutdown happening during a windy time of year in Cape Town, special attention was paid to weather conditions.
The refurbishment of a heat exchanger column had to be executed with surgical precision as the structure around the column was extremely congested and left little room for maneuvering. The preparations to install the new column started immediately after removal of the old column using a 400Te crawler crane and a suitable assist crane for the top and tailing purposes of the column. The old column was directly installed on a conventional trailer for transportation to the demolition yard 26 km off site. To minimize impact on traffic, the column was transported in the early hours of the morning.
For the refurbishment of the reactor the crane had to be assembled in an extremely tight location and the new dome and cyclones were built next to the crane in a specially designed structure leading up to the shutdown period.
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