The Fox River Project in the USA is a clean-up project that will take nine years to complete. The riverbed is contaminated with chemicals including PCBs, most of which came from paper mills. Boskalis Dolman is one of the key players and is acting as subcontractor in carrying out the project.
An essential part of the process is to keep the sediment in suspension before it can be filtered, compacted and cleaned. Typhoon was approached to solve this problem. After studying the details, a scale model of the buffer tanks was constructed in the laboratory at Raamsdonksveer. Experiments were carried out with this to determine the best construction for the tanks and stirrer assembly. The process was then scaled up from 2 m3 to 400 m3. A heavy industrial Ryazan lathe was specially installed to manufacture the shafts. This enabled shaft sections five metres long to be produced.
The alliance with Boskalis Dolman is all thanks to the innovative character of Typhoon. In previous projects Typhoon had shown that the company is always involved in a project right from the outset and that difficulties arising in practice will not be sidestepped whatever their nature. This flexibility has resulted in the high level of mutual confidence that is necessary to undertake such a large-scale project.
See
http://foxrivercleanup.com/foxrivercleanup/project+overview/default.asp for more information about the Fox River project.
1) Project leader Rudy Driessen of Boskalis Dolman with the Fox River plans
2) Stirrer assembly drives and shafts ready for transport to the USA
3) Foundations for the buffer tanks