Many Lifts, One Solution: Modular Lift System Flexes Hydraulic Muscles During Process Plant Overhaul

Deep South crews were challenged to haul, lift, and set 84 modules, including three towers (one measuring 100’ long, 350,000 lbs.) as well as various pieces of process equipment, such as piping, tanks, PDC buildings, and transformers—all within a tight schedule. Many of the modules had offset centers of gravity further complicating the lift and set.

Conventional methods would have required using multiple sets of rigging with different length slings and several shackles to level the modules. The rigging then would have been disassembled and reassembled, making small adjustments in sling lengths or number of shackles, for every new lift—a complexity that added too much time to an already tight schedule.

Instead, Deep South deployed its Module Lifting System with 100-ton lifting capacity, an in-house designed, engineered, fabricated, and tested system designed to set multiple objects of different widths, lengths, and centers of gravity with the same rigging.

The Module Lifting System, with its specialized spreader bars and built-in hydraulic cylinders for easy adjustments, eliminated the need for more conventional rigging systems. It incorporates two 75-ton hydraulic lift cylinders to levels loads in the transverse direction with 4’-0” adjustments and multi-holed lower modular bars equipped, each with two 55-ton hydraulic lift cylinders to level loads in the longitudinal direction with 6’-0” adjustment. With this system in place, operators connected the hydraulic lines to a power pack unit on the ground to make the length adjustments to the hydraulic cylinders, then began the lifts.

In the first phase of the project, over the course of one month, Deep South transported and set 35 modules using 18-axle-line Goldhofer E-series trailers, 18-axle-line Scheuerle SPMTs, and a 440-ton Terex-Demag CC-2400-1 crawler crane. The second phase relied on a 660-ton Liebherr LR-1600/2 crawler crane to move and set 49 modules over the course of two months. Each phase relied upon Deep South’s Module Lifting System as the rigging. All moves, lifts and sets were completed on time and without incident.

• Equipment Used

  • Terex-Demag CC-2400-1
  • Liebherr LR-1600/2
  • Deep South Module Lifting System
  • Scheuerle SPMT
  • Goldhofer E Series & THP Series

• Services Used

  • Custom Solutions
  • Heavy Lift
  • Heavy Haul
  • Turnkey Solutions
  • Engineering

• By the Numbers

  • 100-ton Module Lifting System
  • Haul, lift, and set 84 modules