Al Faris completes UAE power plant lift project
Crane service provider uses Demag CC 3800-1 lattice boom crawler crane to place 16 heat recovery steam generators units weighing up to 80t each, among other lifts
Regional lifting services heavyweight Al Faris recently installed 16 double-wall heat recovery steam generators at a power plant project in the UAE, with the heaviest of the units weighing 80t and measuring 28m in length.
Using a 650t-capacity Demag CC 3800-1 lattice boom crawler crane as the main crane for the job, as well as other lifting and moving equipment, Al Faris finished the lifts, a part of the power plant expansion, in six months. This included transporting, lifting and setting up of various power plant components such as condensers, boilers, HRSG modules, tanks as well as the generators, which will be used to recover the gas power plant’s waste heat and improve its efficiency.
Hilary Pinto, founder and managing director of Al Faris, said: “After considering the load weights and the required performance characteristics, it became clear that only a crane in the 650t class would be able to get the job done. And the reason we ended up deciding on the Demag CC 3800-1 was that it met every single requirement better than all other machines, not to mention that we’re very familiar with its high reliability and incredible capabilities.”
It took a seven-person setup team made up of a crane operator, a supervisor and five assembly technicians 20 hours to set up the crane with an SSL resp. SWSL configuration.
“That really was a pretty amazing feat by our people. After all, the 66m-long boom couldn’t be assembled on the ground due to the SSL configuration and the limited space available, so they had to do it at height,” Pinto said.
To execute the entire project, Al Faris used a whole armada of special-purpose vehicles, including hydraulic trailers and various all-terrain and crawler cranes.
The heaviest and most challenging of the lifts in the project involved the 28m-long heat recovery steam generators, which weighed up to 80t. These HRSG units had to be brought to a height of just under 60m at a radius of 40m so that they could be installed. To do this, the Al Faris team used an SWSL configuration with a 48m main boom, a 36m fly jib, a Superlift counterweight of 165t with a radius of 11m.
For the 16 lifts, the Demag CC 3800-1 was assisted by a 250t crawler crane from Al Faris’ fleet. The latter picked up the heat recovery steam generators from one end so that the CC 3800-1 would be able to bring them to a vertical position. After this, the 250t crane “unhanded” the load so that the CC 3800-1 would be able to travel under load with the corresponding HRSG unit and place it into the desired position.
The Demag CC 3800-1 took about two months at the job-site to complete the 16 lifts, as well as all other lifts, with an SWSL configuration.
“In hindsight, the biggest challenge was the tight space conditions during setup, conversion, and disassembly. Handling the long boom components in particular really demanded a great deal of our team, but they were able to take care of that smoothly, and not in small part thanks to the crane’s ease of assembly,” Pinto said.
