Herrenknecht borer secures power supply in West Africa
For the construction of these underground sea water intake and outfall tunnels (inner diameter 2 meters) Coleman Microtunnelling, a subsidiary of Bothar Group Australia, ordered a Herrenknecht AVND2000AB utility tunnelling machine. Herrenknecht specially designed the tunnel boring machine with a salvage module for this special application: In the sea-outfall method pipelines are constructed from the coastline into the open sea. There, the machine has to be recovered under water. The salvage module prevents the machine and the tunnel from flooding. In addition, for cutter tool changes under high groundwater pressure Herrenknecht equipped the machine (outside diameter 2.5 meters) with a hyperbaric chamber.
Brent Jones, Project Manager for Coleman Microtunnelling, was impressed with the Herrenknecht support in Schwanau and the Herrenknecht service team responsible for the region: "We could not have done it without this extraordinary support. All through Christmas the supply of spare and wear parts went smoothly." Swen Weiner, Area Sales Executive Middle East for the Herrenknecht Business Unit Utility Tunnelling, is certain: "The good project performance for the long sea-outfall drive in Kpone will be a benchmark for the future in the region." The supply of another Herrenknecht machine to the Bothar Group for a next sea-outfall drive in Ghana followed almost seamlessly.
Machine data M-2041M
- Machine type: AVND2000AB
- Excavation diameter: 2,500 mm
- Max. torque: 780 kNm
Project data Kpone Independent Power Project
- Tunnel length: 2,530 m (545 m + 520 m onshore, 380 m + 1,085 m offshore)
- Lining method: pipe jacking
- Application: cooling water intake and outfall
- Geology: weathered gneiss
- Customer: Coleman Microtunnelling, a subsidiary of Bothar Group Australia
- Client: Cenpower
