CC 3800-1 lifts heat recovery steam generators

14 April 2021

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Al Faris used its Demag CC 3800-1 lattice boom crawler crane to install 16 double-wall heat recovery steam generators for a power plant expansion project in the United Arab Emirates.

For six months, Al Faris transported and set up various power plant components, such as condensers, boilers, HRSG modules, generators, and tanks. In order to execute this job, the company deployed special-purpose vehicles, including hydraulic trailers, as well as all-terrain and crawler cranes.

The CC 3800-1 was selected to install the heat recovery steam generators, which will be used to recover the gas power plant’s waste heat and improve its efficiency. “After considering the load weights and the required performance characteristics, it became clear that only a crane in the 650 tonne class would be able to get the job done,” said Al Faris founder and managing director Hilary Pinto.

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 commented.

The heaviest and most challenging lifts 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 Kobelco 250t crawler crane from Al Faris’ fleet. The smaller cralwer 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 install it.

The Demag CC 3800-1 took about two months at the work site to complete these 16 lifts, as well as all other lifts, with an SWSL configuration.