GHHL installs flare with Terex CC 8800-1

Lifting and heavy hauling company Gulf Haulage Heavy Lift (GHHL), based in Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), used a Terex CC 8800-1 to install a flare stack at an oil facility in Yanbu, KSA.

The job with the lattice crawler was done for oil company Saudi Aramaco. The flare stack was 200 metres high and was made up of structure segments weighing between 21 and 104 tonnes each.

Challenges on site included high wind speeds, as Sanjay Pachisia, GHHL general manager, explained, “Every day at approximately 11.00 hours winds would increase from a light breeze of 2 m per second to sustained gusts reaching 16 m per second, and this would sometimes continue all afternoon and evening.”

The project also required a low ground bearing pressure of 12 tonnes per square metre for constructing the crane’s boom configurations and lifting the flare stack. Christian Kassner, Terex Cranes senior sales manager, said, “The CC 8800-1 crawler crane has 2 m wide tracks and offers a wide 10.5 m stance to help disburse the weight over a wide area for heavy lift projects.”

To carry out the lift, GHHL also used heavy-duty steel mats, measuring 5 m long x 2.8 m wide x 0.36 m thick. In addition, attention had to be paid to the rigging and flare section placement.

“The centre of gravity for each section was not in the centre of the flare structures due to the risers, nor was the section installed in the centre of the structure,” Pachisia said.

The CC 8800-1 crane components were moved 1,400 km from Dammam headquarters to the Yanbu project site using seven heavy duty trailers, 12 low bed trailers and 40 flat bed trailers with 12 m decks.

The first piece to be installed was the third-level flare segment. It weighed 104 tonnes and was placed 100.3 m above ground level. For the lift the CC 8800-1 was equipped with 108 m of main boom and its superlift system. The level four segment and level five section were next lifted into place. For the job the crawler was reconfigured with luffing jib on the main boom.

“We chose the crane configurations carefully, in a way that the change consisted of only adding luffing jib boom sections and not changing the main boom length,” Pachisia said. “This way, we reduced crane reconfiguration time substantially.”

The final three lifts for the flare structure included position levels six through to eight. To lift the segments the crawler was configured with main boom and luffing jib to the maximum boom length of 216 m.