Bridges

Perdaman Chemicals and Fertilisers Pty Ltd is focused on the development of one of the world’s largest gas stream urea plants to be located within the Burrup strategic industrial area, approximately 20 km from Karratha on the north-west coastline of Western Australia.

BG&E Pty Limited has been assisting the project to safely transport the large ammonia modules from the Pilbara Port to the plant location.

BG&E’s scope has included a variety of tasks such as logistics studies, existing structural inspections and condition assessments, structural capacity calculations, sensitivity assessments, remediation options analysis, remediation designs, bypass structures, new structural designs, and independent verifications. A range of existing structures have been assessed including mild steel cement lined pipes, corrugated steel pipes, reinforced concrete pipe culverts, and reinforced concrete box units.

The extreme heavy vehicle movements from the Port to the plant are to be accommodated on vehicles with up to 13 t/tyre, which is almost six times the standard vehicle regulation tyre loads for public roads. Adopting a 3-file axle, this amounts to 156 t/axle, with multiple axles spaced at 1.4 m longitudinally.

The extreme heavy vehicles are transported on self-propelled modular transporter platforms, travelling at walking speed, taking about 3 hours to travel just 3 km from Port to foundation. There will be numerous movements of heavy vehicles to complete the transport of the main components of the plant.

Once completed, the plant will produce fertiliser from urea by transforming natural gas into ammonia and then into urea. BG&E has also been involved with design of the closed conveyor road crossings that will be used to transport the urea back to the Port for shipping to local and offshore markets, with up to 100 shiploads expected per year.