PORT CRANES
We were contracted by TTS International Heavy Lift and Transport group and a company called GULFTAINER to dismantle 2X Liebherr Ship to Shore container port cranes in Khalid Port, Sharjah, UAE.
We looked at a few options, but due to the limited space in the working port, we decided this was the best option. As you can see from these pictures, there are a lot shipping traffic as well as crane traffic involved.
TTS International started by jacking the crane up hydraulically and skidding it back off the quay side out of the way of the busy port cranes that very rarely stopped working. Then, we placed new temporary tracks under the wheels and locked the crane down with steel chains so the wind would not push it. When all of the working ropes were removed from the crane, there was no power source available at the time, so we had to use our initiative and experience to make this happen safely and efficiently.
For the first crane, we used one 350 ton DEMAG and one 250 ton Liebherr to remove the front jib. We didn’t have the correct weights, so we had to be over-cautious with each lift. The front jib was 48,000 KG. On day 2, we stripped the A frame (18,000KG) and tie bars 10,000 KG. Day 3, we removed the back jib (18,000kg) and started to remove the parts from the machine house, as it was too heavy to take in one lift. Day 4, we lifted the machine house and prepared to load for the big lift.
For the big lift, some 300,000 KG, we brought all the big cranes on site ready to lift, but the wind was just too much to attempt the complex lift.
The following day we started off the same, the wind was terrible. We waited, and around 2 pm, we decided the wind was now within tolerance, so we begun.
On the front end we used one Gothwald port crane with capacity of 150,000kg at this radius. On the back end we used a new 2015 Liebherr 500 ton on super lift crane with capacity of 118,000 kg at this radius, and in the middle we used a DEMAG 350 ton with super lift- capacity 70 ton.
We lifted until we were 100% certain that we had the complete weight of the upper structure. As soon as we agreed and were happy, we began to cut the legs above the Boggies and sill beams.
Once the legs had been cut free and we had lifted the top structure safely, we moved the complete structure a few meters forward and lowered it down until the bottom of the freshly cut legs rested on the ground. We then used man cages to cut the joints in the legs and removed them from underneath it. We had to repeat this process with the second stage of legs and rest the complete top beam on the ground. It was a long day, but from when we actually began lifting and when we finished, was around 15 hours.
For the second crane (pictures below), as we had documented the weights when dismantling the first crane, the second crane was much easier and quicker. We used only 50-60% of the man hours. The principal stayed the same but some of the lifts we worked differently, we had the use of 2X Gothwald 150 ton port cranes from the port and this made things quicker also.
We used 2x150 ton Gothwalds port cranes, 1x350 ton DEMAG mobile AT crane, 1x250 ton Liebherr AT crane, some 25 ton cranes for man basket and 2 by KATO 100 ton cranes to remove the legs as they were being cut off. The big lift main structure (300,000KG) took 12 hours from when lifted till the main beam rested on the ground.