Saudi Arabian heavy lift company Almajdouie Logistics has moved what is believed to the world’s heavy evaporator, to a desalination project in Yanbu, western KSA.
Weighing in at 5,736.8 tonnes, its gross weight during transportation, the evaporator was shifted to Yanbu 3 Desalination Project using Self Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMT’s).
A total of six of the huge evaporators are being transported by Almajdouie. Four are being banufactured in Vietnam and transported via ship to the jetty at Yanbu, while a second two will be fabricated locally by Bilfal Heavy Industries, and transported to Yanbu in modules that will be assembled.
The first evaporator reached Yanbu on 18th May, 2014, where it was greeted at the Yanbu site jetty with Almajdouie’s 200 axle lines of SPMT’s and 6 Power packs, to execute the roll-off operation and to install the giant evaporator It has dimensions of 137.9 m x 32.1 m x 11.4 m.
A steel plate bridge was placed between the vessel and the jetty to facilitate the roll-on of the SPMT’s, which were already fitted with temporary intermediate steel supports. After the jack-up of the Evaporator using the SPMT’s 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 coordination between the vessel and transport operations teams.
Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction is to build the Yanbu Phase 3 Seawater Desalination Plant under a contract worth US$ 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 of Yanbu and the nearby Medina region. The plant will deliver 550,000 m³/d of water, sufficient to meet daily requirements of 1.8 million people.