September 2008
On 19 September, the facilities of Repsol’s oil refinery in A Coruña went through the most important technical inspection since they were commissioned forty-four years ago. Repsol allocated 23 million Euros and one thousand employees to that task.
Among the multiple reviews, changes and setting up of new equipment that took place, one of the most complex and important ones, both in functionality and difficulty, dimensions and weight, was the replacement of two coke-generation ferrules of 7,611 mm in diameter, 5,432 mm high and 46,000 kg in weight, placed 30 m high. REPSOL contacted EUROGRUAS to complete that task and its Heavy-lifting department, known as ALTON (Alternative Lifting and Sliding Systems), assumed the project’s execution.
In order to extract the ferrules, a gantry frame was assembled. This was composed of 4 lattice modules with 2 x-shaped braces supported by a sliding line and two 13-metre beams, supported by another sliding line fixed to the coke structure. The sliding lines make the setback of ferrule A to ferrule B possible with no need to take the structure apart, reducing thus the execution times.
In order to extract and introduce the ferrules, another sliding line was set up over the 13-metre-long beams, set in action with push-jacks with a maximum capacity of 25 tons each.
To lift and drop the ferrules to ALTON’s structure, a 400-ton crane was used, along with one of EUROGRUAS’ levers to lift it, since the usual hooking was not an option. The execution period lasted 15 days.