Another new crawler crane lifting record

Lifting one of the three reactor vessels in one piece. Each one weighed more than 3,000 tonnes. Photo: Zoomlion

Manufacturer Zoomlion claimed two more world lifting records for its 3,600 tonne capacity lattice boom crawler crane on a project in China.

Between 3 and 8 January the ZCC89000 crawler crane with double lattice booms lifted three giant chemical processing vessels, the heaviest of which weighed more than 3,000 tonnes. Zoomlion claimed two world records, one for the heaviest single lift and the other for the fastest lifting speed.

Being able to install these reactors in single lifts advanced the construction schedule by two months, the crane maker said, with all the attendant benefits.

The job was to install three slurry bed reactors at Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Co., Ltd.’s No.3 new material engineering project in Zhejiang Province, China. The new vessels were part of a project to construct a slurry bed residue hydrogenation plant with a capacity to turn out 300 million tonnes a year.

Largest one piece reactors

Weighing in at 3,037 tonnes and standing 67.57 metres tall, the vessels were claimed as the world’s largest one-piece hydrogenation reactors. To be able to make the lifts the crane manufacturer and the construction contractor upgraded the crane to overcome challenges. These related to the required lifting height, load weight, confined space for lifting and the crane’s roadability for transfer between projects.

At its peak, with 3,160 tonnes of counterweight on the crane, the ZCC89000’s lifting moment reached 92,800 tonne-metres, the manufacturer said.

Another record claimed for this project is as the world’s largest investment in a single industrial project. It will boast an annual refining capacity of 40 million tonnes of oil, 11.8 million tonnes of aromatics, and 4.2 million tonnes of ethylene.