100-meter high pillar for propane dehydrogenation

Tobolsk, October 6, 2010. The Tobolsk-Polymer industrial site has seen the delivery from the port of Tobolsk of all three pillars for its propane dehydrogenation facility, including the largest with a length of 96 meters, diameter of 11 meters, and weight of 1095 tons. They will be installed in the coming days.

The pillars are for one of the largest complexes for polypropylene production being constructed by SIBUR. They were manufactured by Hyundai in South Korea and shipped by sea through the Panama Canal. The equipment was transported to the industrial port of Tobolsk on a special barge from Arkhangelsk via the North Sea route and then up the Irtysh river. In September 2010, the propane dehydrogenation pillars were unloaded onto land.

Preparation of the land transportation route for the pillars took almost a year. Among the works carried out were the modernization of the port, construction of a bypass road across a railway track, disconnection of a 500 kW inter-regional transmission line, construction of a technical passage under a pipeline overpass and other operations. Transportation was carried out on self-propelled transporters from the Dutch firm Mammoet. Controlled remotely, the transporters consist of a platform with a large number of wheels and can carry the largest loads in the world. The speed of a conveyor with a full load is 1.5–3 km per hour, so the 20-kilometer route from the port of Tobolsk to the industrial site took several days with a total transport time of 6 hours.

The transportation of the pillar from the port to the construction site involved more than 60 employees of Tobolsk-Neftekhim and Tobolsk-Polymer, as well as dozens of contractors.

The next stage of delivery of the equipment from the port to the site will be the shipping in mid-October of three boiler-steam generators, with a height of 12 meters and weight of 250 tons each. Up until the end of the year the site will see the delivery from the port of reactors, heat exchangers and economizers. Delivery of bulky equipment to the port of Tobolsk by water will continue in 2011. In total, the construction works are expecting the arrival of 23 pieces of massive heavy equipment.

In addition, under the general supply of goods there will arrive 200 containers, 200 rail wagons and 470 trailers in 2010 alone.

In its complexity and the demands it places on technical and human resources, the delivery of equipment to Tobolsk-Polymer is unique in the global and Russian petrochemical industry.