Olympian tasks

Anti-Corrosion Methods and Materials

ISSN: 0003-5599

Article publication date: 1 August 2000

58

Keywords

Citation

(2000), "Olympian tasks", Anti-Corrosion Methods and Materials, Vol. 47 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/acmm.2000.12847daf.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited


Olympian tasks

Keywords Hasco-Thermic, Galvanizing

Word has reached us that Hasco-Thermic Ltd is moving from one "Marathon" task to another.

The West Midlands-based company, noted for the design and manufacture of hot dip galvanizing plant, earlier this year supplied and installed a new state-of-the-art galvanizing furnace that it believes has set a new record for the industry.

This furnace, at Worksop Galvanizing Ltd, incorporates a 21-metre long galvanizing bath, or "kettle". It holds 600 tonnes of molten zinc into which steel components are dipped, and is thought to be the longest galvanizing bath in Europe.

The mammoth assignment involved a number of special challenges - not least in transporting, handling and installing a long steel structure weighing 70 tonnes, with the aid of massive Megalift hydraulic jacks, as well as advising in the preparation of a site for the new furnace and taking care of piping, gas combustion, electrical control and other systems. Hasco-Thermic planners and engineers worked around the clock to complete the project against a very tight timescale, with all objectives successfully achieved.

Tom van der Raay, Hasco's senior engineer responsible for the project from start to finish, commented:

The scale of this project and the demanding deadlines were exciting challenges for the Hasco team of draughtsmen and engineers. We worked very closely with staff at Worksop to ensure the plant was installed in a narrow window of opportunity over the Millennium Christmas holiday. Even the influenza epidemic (which hit me too!) didn't stop us getting the plant back on line in early January.

Now company thoughts are said to be focusing on jobs with a different "Olympian" slant. Hasco-Thermic flames will soon be aiding more galvanizing in Greece. The company has won two new orders for hot dip galvanizing furnaces at different jobbing plants in Greece.

Angela Woolridge, Hasco-Thermic's sales engineer, commented:

People in the Mediterranean are looking ahead to the Year 2004 and to the Olympic Games in Athens. This means a great deal of construction work has to be carried out, with a lot of structural steelwork going into the facilities.

Greece is one of 26 countries, across five continents, where Hasco-Thermic furnaces are already operating. They are fuelled either by natural gas, LPG, oil or electricity. Work is designed and made-to-measure to meet operational parameters set by the individual customer. The company has devised sophisticated computer programs which it uses, among other things, to predict the ideal geometry of installations, the dimensions and types of individual pieces of equipment needed, burner rates required and so on.

Hasco-Thermic furnaces are based on pulse-fired high velocity burner technology, a proprietary system giving high fuel efficiency and low wear on the bath: the flow of heat from the burners is directed down a "gallery" surrounding the bath and not straight towards the body of the bath itself.

"Recent years have seen a change of emphasis in the industry, with increasing demand for bespoke plants from galvanizers who want installations specifically designed and built to match the type of work they do", said Hasco-Thermic managing director Dr Peter Sibley. "We have just emerged from our busiest ever period in terms of number of installations and the complexity of them. We have the capability to undertake a different installation every few weeks for anyone who needs a 'hot bath'."

As well as the new "superlative" at Worksop, Hasco-Thermic has supplied and installed

  • the furnace that is reported to hold the world record for throughput - to a company in the Far East which uses it to galvanize over 70,000 tonnes of steel a year; and

  • the bath that is said to hold the highest volume of zinc - over 1,000 tonnes, in Switzerland.

Details available from: Hasco-Thermic Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 121 552 4911; Fax: +44 (0) 121 544 8143; E-mail: mail@hasco.co.uk

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