Almajdouie Logistics, a leading project logistics and supply chain company, said it has successfully transported the world’s  heaviest evaporator weighing 5,736.8 tons (gross weight during transportation) to the Yanbu 3 Desalination Project site.

The Saudi firm will be transporting a total of six evaporators - Four of which will be fabricated in Vietnam and shipped to the site jetty at Yanbu, where they will be rolled off the vessel and transported to the foundation by use of self propelled modular transporters (SPMTs).

The other two will be fabricated in modules locally by Bilfal Heavy Industries, and transported to site for assembly.

These evaporators are being brought for Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction which is to build the Yanbu phase 3 Seawater Desalination Plant under a contract worth $1 billion from the Saline Water Conversion Corporation of Saudi Arabia.

The Yanbu 3 multistage flash (MSF) plant will be built 350 km north of Jeddah to supply fresh water to the industrial city and also the nearby Madinah region. The plant will deliver 550,000 cu m of water, sufficient to meet daily requirements of 1.8 million people.

The first evaporator sailed on April 24 from Dung Quat port Vietnam and reached Yanbu on May 18, said a statement from the Saudi logistics group.
 
Once the vessel reached the shore, Almajdouie Logistics, which was ready at the Yanbu site jetty with its transportation team, along with 200 axle lines of SPMTs and 6 Powerpacks, started making arrangements for executing the roll-off operation and to install the giant evaporator, with dimensions  (L x W x H) 137.9 m x 32.1 m x 11.4 m, to its final location at the SWCC site.

After the berthing, custom clearance and removal of seafastening procedures, a steel plate bridge was placed between the vessel and the jetty to facilitate the roll-on of the SPMTs, which were already fitted with temporary intermediate steel supports.

After the jack-up of the evaporator using the SPMTs' integral hydraulic system, the roll-off procedure over the steel plate bridge began in conjunction with the vessel ballasting to maintain the level of the barge to the jetty, with constant close co-ordination between the vessel and transport operations teams.

According to Almajdouie, proper planning and safety are very important in such projects, with method statements, transportation drawings, stability calculations and co-ordination meetings beginning from several months before the actual operations began.

The transportation route had been designed and prepared for loads of 10 tons per sq m up to the foundation, and once the evaporator load was transferred onto the foundation, using the SPMT integral hydraulic system, another successful super-heavy evaporator transportation was completed, the latest of 30 evaporators weighing more than 2,000 tons transported by Almajdouie Logistics in the last few years.-TradeArabia News Service