An extremely long, heavy splitter column made a journey to Houston from Italy late last year.
M.W. Kellogg Co. let a contract to Jumbo Navigation NY, Geneva, Switzerland, to transport the vessels to a Quantum Chemical Corp. petrochemical plant at Deer Park, Tex.
The transport involved three columns, the largest a 748 metric ton splitter column 297 ft long.
The columns were fabricated at Porto Marghera, Italy.
Two of the columns were 66 m long and 6 m in diameter and weighed 497 metric tons and 450 metric tons. They were shipped simultaneously aboard the Jumbo Fairmast.
The splitter column was shipped aboard the Jumbo Challenger after the Italian transport contractor F'lli Elia had moved the column about 1 km from the yard to a dock.
The contractor used two Cometto hydraulic platform trailer dollies, one with 11 axles and one with 10 axles, coupled side by side. A steel loadspreading frame with turntable on each dolly enabled the combination to make turns.
LOADING/UNLOADING
Top end of the splitter column was lifted from the front dolly with Jumbo Challenger's forward derrick while the lower end remained on the rear dolly.
Then the top end was slewed gently underneath the ship's forward derrick with the rear dolly automatically following that movement on the dock alongside the ship until the column's lower end was positioned exactly underneath the aft derrick's tackle.
Slings were belly slung just before the rear transport saddle, resulting in a lifting reaction force of 450 tons. After the lower end was lifted from its dolly, both derricks slewed the column forward as far as possible. The movement was not enough to enable the aft derrick to slew the column aboard past the aft deck lifeboat.
In a planned second phase of loading, temporary wooden cribbing was placed under the column's top end on the forward deck so the column's top end could be lowered. That enabled the forward derrick to be shifted closer to the column's center of gravity. Lifted again, the column could be slewed into its final position only a few meters from the bow.
The two steel transport saddles were augmented with wooden cribbings built up underneath the column to spread the load over a larger area on deck.
Offloading at Houston was practically the reverse of the loading at Porto Marghera, except that the process vessel was lifted onto trailers on barges.
Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.