October 5 - Aertssen Kranen has completed the installation of a 420-tonne reactor at BP Chembel's WiESOX project in Geel, Belgium.
The 10.2 m wide by 17.77 m long reactor was built at Coek Engineering, a few kilometres from the project site. Roll-iT, a co-partnership of Aertssen Kranen (Aertssen Group) and Ivens Transport & Kraanbedrijf (Ivens Group), coordinated the transport of the reactor to site.
Roll-iT used 32 axle lines of SPMTs to move the unit. Traffic was stopped on the E313 highway to allow passage of the trailer combination and support vehicles. Crash barriers on the highway were removed and reinstalled to allow the cargo to pass.
A weak bridge crossing an inland waterway also hindered the transport. Roll-iT was forced to build a temporary bridge over the channel in order to access the project site.
To complete the rigging works, two crawler cranes tilted the reactor: one Terex CC2800-1 as main crane, with a Terex CC2400 as tailing crane. Aertssen then safely positioned the reactor on its final foundations at a radius of 15.5 m. The main crane was rigged in SSL configuration with 54 m main boom.
Bob De Jong, project manager at BP Chembel, said: "Everything went smoothly, transport as well as lifting. The track from the place where we crossed the E313 highway to the construction site was covered even faster than planned. The temporary bridge was set in place just in time."
During October, a second smaller reactor will be removed from the BP site for modification works. This reactor will later be repositioned at a new location within the BP plant.
