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Low bridge-head as bottleneck |
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Joint land/sea/land operation by Riedl/Navigomes from Bavaria to Portugal
TransportMarkt 1/2-2000
Most critical point of this sophisticated land/sea/land operation moving a giant cold box from Schalchen in Southeastern Germany via the ports of Bremen and Setubal into the Southern part of Portugal was the final transport leg from Setubal harbour to the destination site near Alenquer and putting upright and setting down of the box on its foundation. Due to the outstanding dimensions of this largest component of a new air separation plant, the project team of the EHLG partners Riedl and Navigomes had to investigate a specific route through the Southern part of Portugal. | Beforehand the same team investigated a special route suitable for the on-carriage from Setubal harbour to the site at Chegancas near Alenquer.
A specific obstacle which could not be by-passed had been a bridge with a clearance of 5,100 mm only up to the bridge-head, while total height of the transport using normal modular trailers with turning bolsters would have been 5,530 mm reduced by a hy draulic suspension of - 250 mm. To avoid an unloading of the cold box for skidding it through the bridge beneath the low bridge-head or handling the box by cranes over the bridge, the team searched for a suitable special trailer on the Portuguese market. Even an operation supported by the Linde girder bridge had been considered.
Nevertheless, the alternative had been found in the country itself: a 2 x 7 axle modular road trailer (Cometto type) with integrated prism bed and equipped swivelling bolsters and a minimum loading platform of 930 mm with own hydraulic suspension of - 250 mm enabling a safe distance of 90 mm to the bridge-head. This sophisticated bridge passing required a total of eight weeks time for approval by the regional authorities. All technical requirements of moving the cold box onto the site at Chegancas and for the upright operation had been defined, worked out and technically prepared by the project team Riedl/Navigomes jointly with the Linde engineers at the construction site. In addition the project team and the crane operator teamed up for drawing up a lifting study for turning the 35.59 m box into upright position. This working basis with all certified papers for the operation of cranes, liftingframe, shackles and and hawsers were presented to the Linde project management be forehand and was accordingly approved. Based on this preplanning, the project team on the site deployed a Liebherr LTM 1500 mobile crane with top-jib as main crane and a Grove GMK 6250 mobile crane as slave crane for uprighting the box and putting it down on its foundation. With a precision work onto points lasting three hours the sophisticated transport and engineering order was executed without any complaints on December 12th last year. 
Ready to go: The cold box loaded onto two modular units equipped with turning bolsters in the port of Setubal before leaving forfinal destination.
Precise positioning of the suspended box over the margin points of the foundation.
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Turning the cold box into an upright position on the job site by the main crane (right), a Liebherr LTM with top jib, and the slave crane (left), a Grove mobile crane of the GMK 6250 type.
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The entire operation of turning the box into upright position and placing it on its foundation only lasted three hours.
| After inviting tenders by the end of July 1999, the contract was awarded in late September to the Rolf Riedl GmbH acting as main contractor for the entire transport chain and for the project management by the German exporter Linde AG, Werksgruppe Verfahrenstechnik und Anlagenbau, based at Höllriegelskreuth near Munich. Already on 18th October the Riedl team took over the huge cold box at the Linde works at Schalchen in Upper Bavaria. The physical operation was preceded by a thorough and careful investigation of routings combined with longstanding applications to obtain official permits. Precarriage to the port of shipment by road directly was arranged by the Riedl team deploying a twelve axle modular trailer (Scheuerle system) divided into two units of five and seven axles with a Linde-owned girder bridge mounted between them. The giant cold box of 84,200 kilos within a transport unit of about 52 metres total length caused sensation by its dimensions of 35,590 mm length and a cross section of 4,320 x 4,080 mm. In the port of Bremen the Linde box was handled by a floating crane of BLG Bremer Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft into a coaster under supervision of the Riedl affiliate Transgerma Riedl & Kiehntopf GmbH. Transgerma was also responsible for chartering the vessel and for securing and lashing the box in the ship's hold. After arrival in the Southern Portuguese port of Setubal the cold box was discharged by means of two huge mobile cranes onto quayside stillages. The entire handling operation had been prepared by a joint team of experts of the Riedl group and their Portuguese partner Navigomes Lda. |
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