Critical Hauls Completed for Shell Chemical’s Tiger A04 Project
Turner Industries Completes Critical Hauls for Shell Chemical’s Tiger A04 Project
Location: Geismar, Louisiana
The Shell Chemical facility is currently undergoing a major plant expansion project—Tiger AO4—adding a fourth Alpha Olefins unit, making the plant the largest producer of the product in the world. As the construction manager, Turner Industries manages all work areas of the ongoing project.
Over 600 pieces of equipment are being shipped in from all over the world. In June 2016, three reactor high-pressure vessels—the heart of the unit— arrived in New Orleans, La. from Italy. From New Orleans, the reactors along with a separator vessel were shipped on a barge to Geismar, La., where Turner Industries’ specialized transportation group received the items alongside the Mississippi River Levee, a few miles from Shell Chemical’s new construction site.
The three reactor vessels were offloaded from the barge, after being loaded on with two hydraulic Goldhofer PST/SL E-10 Transporters, with a 450 metric ton hauling capacity each and delivered to the site. The separator vessel was transported on a single 10 line Goldhofer Transporter.
The offloading and transportation of Tiger AO4 equipment was preceded by over a thousand engineering hours and months of planning. Coordinating with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Atchafalaya Levee Commission and the Coastal Erosion Committee, the river landing was prepped for barge arrival. Approximately 300 crane mats (8′ x 16′) were required to cross the batture property from the barge ramps to the Mississippi River Levee crossing roadway. Due to the extreme weight of the reactors (over 200 Tons each), super specialized heavy hauling permits were obtained, requiring soil analysis, paving and bridge analysis and involved thirteen agencies, from power companies to state and local sheriff’s departments. Tree limbs were trimmed, power lines were raised and outages were scheduled as required. Since the transport involved crossing railroad tracks, Canadian National Railway Company (CN) permits were obtained and a CN coordinator was present for all railroad crossings.
The second major barge / heavy haul project of 2016 involved the delivery of two high purity distillation columns and a scrubber to the Tiger AO4 facility in mid-December. The tallest column, the C-4 Column, was over 250′ and over 250 Tons. The C-6 Column was 230′ in length and 200 Tons. The scrubber vessel weighed in at 165 Tons. Both projects were completed ahead of the proposed schedule incident-free.
