
Date
2023 - 2024Client
E.ONLocation
WillebroekStatus
GerealiseerdFoundation work and high level concrete construction
E.ON Power Plants Belgium (E.ON) is investing heavily in the construction of a new energy recovery plant for the Imerys production site in Willebroek. The construction of this plant is an important milestone in Belgium's energy transition, as E.ON is recycling the by-product syngas from Imerys to generate electricity. The planned capacity is up to 29 megawatts, to be exact, which is enough to provide the Imerys plant, plus 40,000 households in the region, with electricity for a whole year. Not only that, it will reduce CO2 emissions by 25,000 metric tonnes annually. Mourik specialises in industrial construction in Belgium. We laid the foundations for this site and the installations of the plant, as well as constructing the entire turbine building, which is the beating heart of the plant and a fine example of concrete construction. The turbine itself is 12 metres high and stands on a concrete base measuring 1.60 metres thick, which we laid on the site.
Concrete work foundations and turbine building
Let us provide a few hard figures to illustrate the scale of this project: we processed 3,800 cubic metres of concrete for the foundations and the turbine building, partly laid on site and partly prefab. The concrete base on which the turbine stands weighs 420 metric tonnes and itself stands on six columns of 25 metric tonnes each. To support the formwork during the laying of the concrete base, we constructed scaffolding using 26 metric tonnes of steel, while the concrete contains 577 metric tonnes of reinforcement. The concrete building involves some huge volumes, and on top of that the finishing of the site and the turbine building: laying roads on the site, stuccowork, tiling and toilet facilities, through to showers and a kitchen for the E.ON operators. A complete package, then. But the figures only tell part of the story, as this project is still mostly about accuracy.
Precision work for specialists
Speaking of precision: all of the foundations are on a drainage slope, with many sections even receiving drainage from multiple directions. This meant the formwork and the heavy industrial reinforcement needed to be laid accurately. The same kind of challenge existed for the prefab concrete columns, which had a tolerance of just a few millimetres for positioning them. Prefab concrete construction is a complex puzzle that requires specific expertise to solve it. Laying the turbine base was also a precision task, with hardly any leeway for the setting of the floor after removing the braces. And all this had to be done with a tight deadline without any option for extensions. So it all needed to be right first time round.

A consulting firm had produced a design and calculations for the entire project, and those for the prefab components were based on our recommendations. However, the design plans still needed to be converted into implementation plans to make them feasible in practice. There were various bottlenecks involved, such as the production time for the prefab concrete components and other materials, as well as the required method of producing the formwork for laying the sloping foundations and the turbine base. It is not always possible to make absolutely certain of everything in advance. This is one of the reasons why E.ON chose Mourik as its partner for this industrial construction project: they knew we were able to translate the design into practice and optimise 'on the job', without compromising when it came to time and quality. And that means huge added value when complexity is high and time is short.
Contact
B-2030 Antwerpen
BELGIUM