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That's nothing. A few years ago, I was working doing some of the engineering for a major alumina refinery upgrade in Australia. One of the major parts of an al

That's nothing. A few years ago, I was working doing some of the engineering for a major alumina refinery upgrade in Australia. One of the major parts of an alumina refinery is what's called a calciner, which heats the produced alumina to drive off the chemically-bound water from the product. They're complex piece of plant with large ducts, blowers and cyclones all laid out with insulating material to protect against the high temperatures and erosive nature of the alumina. We built our calciners in Thailand as entire modules - not merely the size of a bridge, but the size of a 6-story building, complete with all equipment, structure and wiring in place, and then shipped them to the refinery site in Australia. The largest of the modules was 1800+ tons. Ah, found a picture: Here's one of our calciners about to be offloaded from the MV Sea Baron. The crawler crane at the very right of the picture gives a sense of scale. http://www.outotec.com/pages/page.aspx?id=34948&epslanguage=EN http://www.outotec.com/pages/page.aspx?id=34948&epslangu...

Vargas 15y ago
That's nothing. The Øresund (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge) was built Lego style in Spain, shipped piecewise and assembled on site.
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Symmetry 15y ago
That's nothing. In Portland, ME, where I grew up there used to be this huge blue drydock in the harbor. Occasionally I would see whole Burke class destroyers[1] lifted up out of the water in it. The end of the Cold War meant that the navy was downsizing, though, and eventually it was decided that there were better uses for the place. It was sold to a city in Croatia, and they somehow put floats underneath and just sailed the whole thing across the Atlantic. Then they built a few oil rigs where it used to be, and sailed those down to Venezuela. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_class

Vargas 15y ago

That's nothing. The Øresund (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge) was built Lego style in Spain, shipped piecewise and assembled on site.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

Symmetry 15y ago

That's nothing. In Portland, ME, where I grew up there used to be this huge blue drydock in the harbor. Occasionally I would see whole Burke class destroyers[1] lifted up out of the water in it. The end of the Cold War meant that the navy was downsizing, though, and eventually it was decided that there were better uses for the place. It was sold to a city in Croatia, and they somehow put floats underneath and just sailed the whole thing across the Atlantic. Then they built a few oil rigs where it used to be, and sailed those down to Venezuela. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burke_class