We’re a little over halfway through 2017 and it certainly has been the year of BIG transformer recycling for A-Line E.D.S. One A-Line crew spent a week in the southern summer heat taking down 2 of the largest transformers ever made for operation in a nuclear facility. The in-service weight of these transformers topped 1.8 million pounds of which nearly 1.4 million was core material alone. Check out these monster shell-type transformers!
The first day was spent stripping the auxiliary components from the transformers and preparing the upper tank sections for removal. Here is a short time lapse video of our crew hard at work-
Once the upper tanks were removed. The cores were exposed and ready for the crew to get to work removing the multiple layers of core steel, also called silicon laminations.
As the pictures show, these transformer cores had several hudreds of thousands of pounds of core steel to be removed and loaded out for recycling.
The A-Line team made quick work of the core steel extraction, clearing all of the material in just 3 days. Once the core steel was removed these oversized windings, or rugs, were ready to be pulled and shipped for further processing and recycling.
After the transformer windings had been removed the tanks were downsized and sent for recycling. The site was then cleaned and the crew headed home for a quick rest before heading to the next project.
This crew removed an average of 300,000 pounds of transformer material per day. This is no small task in a nuclear plant setting. The A-Line crews have comprehensive training for working in the most stringent locations. Our experience and training combined with our company designed equipment and methods allow us to complete projects in a fraction of the time of our competition. We provide the safest and most efficient transformer recycling service in the country. If we can’t do it, it can’t be done.
