Featured in The Telegraph http://thetelegraph.com/news/104725/slow-ride-330-ton-reactor-makes-trek-through-riverbend-to-refinery

ROXANA — A special delivery, weighing in at 330 tons, recently traversed the community to find its Roxana home.

A few unaware spectators caught a glimpse as law enforcement officers guided a very large reactor as it made its way from the Mississippi River to the Phillips 66 Wood River Refinery Wednesday morning.

The 90 foot-long, 24 foot-wide apparatus was secured to the platform of a self-propelled modular trailer and operated by Deep South Industrial Services to make the roughly five-hour trip from the Phoenix Terminal in Hartford through South Roxana to the refinery in Roxana. The trip to the refinery started at approximately 7 a.m.

The “heavy haul” is not often done by the refinery, but is nothing new. In 2008, the refinery transported 125 reactors in similar fashion.

The reactor made its four-day trek from Luka, Mississippi on a barge via the Tennessee River to the Ohio River and finally to the Mississippi River for use in the process of controlling reactions in making gasoline. The reactor, which arrived a couple days prior to Wednesday, is to replace an older operating unit, said Wood River Refinery spokesperson Melissa Erker.

“Continued investment in the operating equipment to ensure safe and reliable operations is an important focus of the Wood River Refinery,” said Erker.

Wood River Refinery’s project engineering team has overseen the project, to later be handed off to the operations team and other skilled crafts workers at the facility.

The installation is to begin next spring, with preparation to take place on-site in the coming months. Although a price tag for the project could not be discussed Wednesday morning, the refinery is operated by Phillips 66, an American, energy manufacturing and logistics company that reported $51 billion of assets as of March 31.