Two hydrocracking reactors made by ATB Riva Calzoni have sailed on board the BigLift company’s Happy Star ship, with their destination the first private Nigerian refinery owned by Dangote Refining Ltd.
The high-pressure units were made both at Roncadelle, in the province of Brescia, which is the headquarters of the Lombardy company, and Marghera, in the assembly workshops owned by ATB Riva Calzoni, just a few meters from the outbound terminal. Each of the two components (pressure vessels), which are amongst the largest ever made in the petrochemical sector, weigh 1,535 metric tons and are 60 meters long, setting a record for the port, which had never loaded anything that heavy.
The stage in which the reactors were transported from the facility to the quay was conducted by Fagioli spa which, to meet the load-bearing limits of the ground, used a 72-axle SPMT (Self-Propelled Modular Transporter) putting together convoys of as much as 60-meters long, 8.5 meters wide and 10 meters tall for each load. The convoys were moved to the multiservice terminal quays through the Via Sali access, which was created especially for transporting extraordinary loads, where the two reactors were loaded bound for Nigeria on the BigLift ship, which is equipped with two cranes each capable of carrying 1,100 metric tons.
