Customer: The world’s largest flare manufacturer
Location: Abu Dhabi, UAE
Year: 2009
Flares are combustion smokestacks used in petrochemical plants to burn dangerous gases. They are vertical structures with heights greater than 45 m, made clearly visible through the installation of obstruction lights to guarantee the safety of low-altitude flights.
Despite the lamps used in this sector are designed with very high standards and protected by explosion-proof enclosures, it happens – over the years – that the ones installed in the highest section of the structure burn out due to high temperatures. Experiencing the problem many times, our customer – the world’s largest flare manufacturer – asked us to develop a solution that would guarantee easy and safe procedures for the maintenance of the obstruction lights installed on the top of its flares. In particular, he was looking for a solution that did not require turning off the flare – since such an operation involves stopping the entire production plant.
The customer had the intuition that the best solution was to lower the lamps to the ground, but they didn’t know how to do it and they couldn’t find on the market a product that did it. Which company specialised in the manufacturing of lamps would also have the skills to design and build such a complex mechanical carpentry solution? Our team of engineers succeeded and created in record time and in budget such a system, consisting of a pulley, a rope and a winch. Simple and functional.
Carrying out this project we coined our motto «good engineering always consists of the simplest solution» and, today, our Retractable system has become a solution for many customers all over the world. It’s a system that lowers the lamps to the ground and allows the replacement and maintenance operations without the need to climb to altitude or stop production activities. Today, several versions are available, both by rope and by rail including an exceptional one, with a track over 120 m long.
