BASF Antioxidant Project Module

Truck land transport module, a small device.

It’s still quite large; the entire device is integrated together

Give this one like ================= As BASF’s first modular project worldwide, the antioxidant plant at the Caojing facility was entirely designed and built by a Chinese team. The project team demonstrated through practice BASF’s comprehensive strengths in technology and engineering, as well as its technical expertise and value in terms of quality, innovation, and safety. After the project was completed, many teams across BASF showed great interest in this project and the modular construction method used. The project team welcomed wave after wave of visiting groups, including those from engineering departments as well as other business units and technical procurement colleagues. They are very concerned about aspects such as engineering design, internal team communication, and cost control. Officials at BASF believe that, as an emerging construction method, modular construction holds great potential in the future: \"In areas where labor costs are high and climate conditions are harsh, or for chemical plants that require a high degree of standardization, modular construction could become an ideal solution for project construction.\" ”

I really hope it’s not a truck that’s being used ==================

Despite the many advantages of modular construction, it is truly not easy to build a modular factory. “At the current stage, there are many limitations to modular construction, particularly the road transport conditions for the ‘last mile’ of prefabricated modules. ”A BASF official said, “This is BASF’s first modular project on a global scale; there was no prior experience to draw from, so everything had to be started from scratch.” ”In his view, it is the collective effort of the entire team (whether in engineering design, manufacturing, or on-site construction) that enables the project to succeed. Given the special characteristics of modular factories, the team first conducted road surveys, including those of the docks that would be used for transportation, the cranes, and the road conditions over the final kilometer to the Caojing facility. Only after understanding all the external factors involved in module manufacturing, transportation, and assembly did they proceed with the design work. In the design of modular plants, consideration must be given not only to the chemical processing units themselves but also to how these modules should be divided: the main units cannot be separated, each module must be designed to meet transportation requirements, and connections between modules should be minimized as much as possible. The biggest challenge in design is how to prevent the modules from deforming during transportation. Deformation of the module during lifting and transportation not only makes assembly difficult but also causes damage to the civil engineering floor. To ensure successful on-site assembly, the deviation of components must not exceed 3 millimeters. Among them, structural engineers face particularly tough challenges; they need to calculate the stress conditions of the modules in all aspects and determine the exact center of gravity, in order to design the connections between the steel structures and the modules accurately. To this end, the structural design team collected a large amount of data, including accurate information on components as well as the precise weights of equipment, cable trays, pipes, control boxes, and even bolts and nuts. They conducted calculations 3-4 times more extensive than usual to ensure the smooth assembly of various modules in the future. After the design was completed, the modular units began to be prefabricated in the workshops of Liebert Group Company located in Zhangjiagang. Furthermore, during the module prefabrication process, the equipment is already being tuned and faults are being resolved to prepare for the factory’s trial operation

Experience worth sharing =============== Modular manufacturing has many advantages, including shorter time required, better construction efficiency and quality control, as well as higher construction safety. First is the short time required. The use of a modular construction approach significantly shortened the construction period, achieving a speed that has never been reached by BASF’s production facilities of this scale. Traditional construction projects require completing the civil work at the construction site first, before proceeding with the installation of pipes in the facility above ； Now, since the components are prefabricated in off-site workshops, civil work and pipeline installation can be carried out simultaneously, which saves a great deal of time. Secondly, this off-site workshop prefabrication is carried out within the factory building, free from external factors such as weather and environment; as a result, workers’ efficiency improves significantly, and the quality of the work is also higher. Taking welding efficiency as an example, in traditional construction projects, each worker welds 20–25 inches of pipe per day (with the inch diameter or circumference of a single pipe being 1 inch), while in factory settings, the amount of pipe that can be welded by each worker per day reaches 50–60 inches. In traditional plant construction, welding work often has to be halted on rainy days, but inside the factory, there are no such disruptions; temperature and humidity are under control, which **improves the quality of welding. Finally, the prefabrication method also eliminates many safety and pollution risks, thereby improving construction safety. Traditional construction projects require the use of fixed scaffolding, and workers with poor safety awareness who climb up and down pose significant risks. Now, production takes place in the workshop; although the equipment is 30 meters tall in total, there is no need to use any scaffolding at all. The mobile scaffold was only used when needed. Furthermore, automatic pipe welding can be carried out in the workshop, with no smoke generated and less noise; the metal shavings produced by machine cutting are also reused.