Coasters vessel freight to Burullus • Small fishing port turned into a transportation hub for Mega gas- and steam combined cycle power station
The final push for a gigantic order: Until September, DB Schenker will be transporting a total of 100,000 tons with 400,000 cbm of freight to Egypt for Siemens AG, which is building one of the largest gas-fired power stations in the world. Burullus is the site of one of three Siemens power stations. Powered by natural gas, each plant has a capacity of 4.8 gigawatts, which will be generated by eight Siemens gas turbines and four steam turbines. This technology has been selected for its high efficiency.
A 600-ton crane unloads the turbines in Burullus.
The heavy parts are delivered at a specially reinforced pier.
The heavy parts, such as generators and turbines, are lifted with steel ropes.
The individual components include turbines, generators, transformers, and boilers, with single weights up to almost 500 tons. Each of the three power stations requires 248 of these massive components in total.
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The heavy components from Europe and the USA are shipped straight to the Burullus fishing port. Parts from Asia arrive first at the port of Alexandria by ocean-going ship. There, they are reloaded onto smaller coasters which can access the port at Burullus, some 80 kilometers away, thanks to their smaller draft.
DB Schenker undertook the necessary preparation work to ensure the massive components could be unloaded at Burullus harbor: Its depth had to be increased to 5.50 meters and a pier needed reinforcement, while access routes and facilities for temporary storage had to be constructed. A 600 ton crane was installed to discharge the individual components to low-bed trailers. The port at Burullus is just 16 kilometers from the construction site.
All three power stations are going on stream successively already since the end of 2016.
Some facts about the biggest project in Schenker Deutschland’s history:
- One single gas turbine weighs 482 tons. This roughly equals the weight of 100 elephants or 32 city buses.
- DB Schenker is transporting eight turbines of this size and a further 240 components weighing more than 50 tons apiece to the Nile delta in Egypt.
- A small fishing port 16 kilometers east of the construction site was completely reconstructed within five months in order to enable handling of the heavy-lift pieces: The approach channel and basin were dredged to a depth of 5.5 m, the breakwater was extended by 150 meters, 1,500 meters of access road were built, 6,000 square meters of storage area were constructed, and a 125 meter pier was reinforced for heavy loads.
- DB Schenker collects the gigantic components produced at plants around the world: Gas turbines from Berlin, generators from Mülheim in Germany and Charlotte in the US state of North Carolina. Transformers come from Weiz in Austria and Zagreb in Croatia. Condensers and parts for the steam turbines come from Banten in Indonesia, while 192 modules for the eight boilers are produced in Ulsan in South Korea.
- 316,000 cubic meters of other power station components are being delivered by sea or air.
- The construction of the power stations in Egypt also represents a record for Siemens. The company signed the contract with Cairo in June 2015 for the construction of three gas and steam turbine combined power stations, plus twelve wind parks with a total of 600 turbines. Once they are operating at full capacity, they will increase Egypt’s power generation by 50 per cent. In terms of output, each of the combined cycle power plants is the biggest in its class in the world.
