In order to meet the growing worldwide demand for special clays, a transnational oil and chemical company has decided to expand its plant capacities in a factory in Germany. In future, the newly-built plant is to produce special clays which will be used in high-performance abrasives or as a carrier material for catalysts.
Last March BUTTING obtained the order for the production of two columns. This processing engineering equipment in the form of a hollow, slender column has special fittings, as required by the application or the operating conditions. Both columns were prefabricated in Knesebeck: The first column, 25 metres long and 1 400 mm in diameter, was produced in two parts, as was the second column, which was much smaller, 15 metres long and 1 000 mm in diameter.
The large number of fittings presented a special challenge: A total of more than 190 metres of welding wire had to be welded for the inner fittings. Robert Lenz, Spools & plant construction, explains: “A large number of branches were welded on one side. In so doing, very tight tolerance requirements had to be complied with, in order to guarantee the parallelism of the inner fittings.” In addition, carbon steel support feet had to be welded to one end of each column.
Thus the columns left Knesebeck at the end of February in several parts on a total of four lorries. The very high degree of prefabrication benefited the customer. The joints did not have to be welded, but only screwed together on the construction site.
BUTTING – Progress by Tradition