The Marl Chemical Park, a chemical production site based in the north-western German town of Marl, has been a customer of compatriot crane manufacturer Stahl CraneSystems since the early 1970s.
The site, which is the largest product site of speciality chemicals giant Evonik, covers more than six square kilometres and provides around 10,000 jobs. Operations on the site involve converting petrochemical raw materials into products including wallpaper, paint, and pharmaceuticals.
The high energy demands of the park are covered by the production of electricity and steam in eco-friendly combined heat and power generation facilities, with two gas and steam turbines and one coal-fired power plant in operation. The site also has its own hazardous waste incineration plant, for processing residue from the chemical production process; this site’s crane needed updating. The challenge for Stahl CraneSystems and Scheffer Krantechnik, therefore, was to fit the new system seamlessly into the existing building.
The existing crane was also supplied by Stahl CraneSystems, in October 1996; prior to that, the Marl Chemical Park had been working with explosion-proof versions of crane technology from Stahl.
The new 6.3t-capacity double-girder crane has a span of 14m and is designed for gripper operation. It features walkways along the crane bridge, including a fully walk-on double-rail travel carriage. An SHW8 winch is used as rail travel carriage, and a newly-installed latest-generation WCS position encoderalong the crane runway and crane bridge is used by the site PLC to monitor exact position.
All the power, control and data lines of the external control system were also updated, with a festoon cable system.
Kai Faber from Evonik Industries said: “We expect upgrades in the next few years particularly in thecase of our existing plants, some of which are already 40 years old. Wehave worked gladly with STAHL CraneSystems because their technology worksreliably over many years and guarantees us the safety we need here at MarlChemical Park.”
