Mammoet has successfully transport two ethylene oxide (EO) reactors within Alberta, Canada.
Moving the reactors from Dacro Industries to Shell Scotford in Alberta’s industrial heartland, Mammoet completed the project in the first two months of 2025.
Each of the reactors weighed 670 tonnes, with a diameter of approximately 8.4 m and a length of 23 m, with applications being predominantly used towards the production of downstream petroleum products.
Due to the unusually short length of the items, the total vehicle weight needed for transport was nearly double the weight of the cargo itself. At 1,760 tonnes of total gross vehicle weight, two pull trucks and six push trucks were used to move the specially designed frame for the reactors onto the trailers, which created a transport train length which exceeded 140 m.
“The primary challenge in moving vessels of this weight is in spreading out the load per axle on our trailers” said Curtis Barnett, senior operations director at Mammoet Canada Western. “Typically, vessels like this are longer, but these are shorter than average and particularly heavy. That’s why we had to have the frame engineered to balance out the weight of each vessel across the two trailers.”
The frame was fabricated using four P55 beams from a Mammoet gantry system, with bespoke ends to securely accommodate the two reactors. Then, the frame was mounted on large turntables on each of the two 26-line double-wide intercombi trailers, allowing the 90-degree turn necessary to enter the destination site.
Last month, Mammoet was on hand in Chile to relocate mining equipment from one site to another.
