Deep South Crane and Rigging has replaced two coke drums at a Louisiana refinery.
Deep South received the new coke drums from a ship at the port of Houston and then barged them to a dock on the Calcasieu River in Louisiana.
Once on location, the coke drums were rolled off the barge and staged using 440-ton (399.2-tonne) Terex-Demag CC-2400-1 in sideways superlift (SSL) configuration with a 177.2 ft (54 m) main boom, along with a 500-ton (453.6-tonne) Liebherr LTM1400-7.1 tail crane. Each drum was erected into the vertical position and placed in a jig stand to add insulation.
Before the refinery outage, Deep South relied on a 16-axle-line split SPMT with a widening system for over-the-road transport of new coke drums from barge to refinery.
Deep South used a VersaCrane TC-24000 with a 310 ft (94.5 m) main boom because of the slope of the cock pit. No rock was used in the pit due to post-operation cleaning that would be required, effectively ruling out the use of any crawler crane because of the amount of matting or rock needed to level it.
The crane was assembled offsite and moved into position when ready so that the refinery unit could keep running at full capacity until unit shutdown.
The transport of the crane from its staging position to its final lift position took approximately one hour. Altogether, the off-site assembly saved around 15 days when considering mobilisation, assembly, disassembly and demobilisation.
Once unit shutdown was complete, Deep South moved the VersaCrane TC-24000 into the final lift position with the boom in the air to begin the derrick cutting and coke drum exchange using two 18-axle-line Scheuerle SPMTs. The crane measured 47.6 ft in length x 47.6 ft in width x 295.3 ft in height (14.5 m x 14.5 m x 90 m) and weighed 1,607,250 lbs (729 tonnes).
The drums were removed and set onto a 12-axle-line Goldhofer E-Series for in-plant transport of existing coke drums, transported to the laydown area, and offloaded using a 700-ton (635-tonne) gantry jack system for later disposal. Once the new coke drums were placed, the derrick structure was reset and the crane was taken back to a nearby laydown area for disassembly and demobilisation.
