COLUMBUS, Miss. (WTVA) -- Sunday, October 28, Burkhalter Rigging, Inc., will begin moving two hydrogen sulfide (H2S) absorbers from their current staging location in Bigbee Valley to their final destination at Mississippi Power’s Kemper County IGCC Plant.
The H2S absorbers are each 238 feet long, 21 feet wide, 21 feet high and weigh 1,425,730 pounds.
Each absorber will be hauled over the 76 mile route utilizing 160 axles of Goldhofer modular transporters, with center dollies and wing dollies used at bridge crossings.
Including the prime mover trucks at the front and rear of the transporters, the total 732-wheel configuration for each absorber will be 28 feet tall, 22 feet wide, 346 feet long and weigh just under 2,500,000 pounds.
In order to spread the load weight across the entire bridge, eight wing dollies will be added at the Noxubee River Bridge crossing for a width of 40 feet and a total of 796 tires per load.
The convoy, including both absorbers, police escorts, pilot cars and repair vehicles, will leave the staging site at Tenn-Tom One Stop in Bigbee Valley at approximately 8 p.m. Sunday night and travel down Highway 388 to Highway 45 South.
The convoy will then travel south in the northbound lane of Highway 45 South from the Highway 388 junction to Scooba, where it will turn onto Highway 16 West, go through DeKalb and then turn south onto Highway 493 before arriving at the Kemper County IGCC Plant.
Transportation will take place during the night over the course of one week, with equipment stationary during daylight hours.
Burkhalter-directed crews will maintain traffic control throughout the length of the haul.
Road closures and delays will be made available by the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT).
The H2S absorbers originally were shipped from Korea to the Port of Mobile, Ala., where Burkhalter crews barged the vessels via the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway to Bigbee Valley, offloaded from the barges and set at their current location.
The absorbers will eventually be used at the state-of-the-art electric power plant that will convert coal into gas and reduce emissions, including a 65 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions into the environment.
Burkhalter Rigging, Inc., is an award-winning specialized rigging, lifting and transport provider for mission-critical shipments of extremely large and heavy cargoes that are irreplaceable, valuable, and/or impossible to rapidly repair.
