MJW Continues Longstanding Partnership with Georgia-Pacific with Demineralizing Tank Replacement at Florida Plant

MJW has enjoyed a longstanding professional relationship with Georgia-Pacific, one of the world’s leading makers of tissue, pulp, packaging and building products. At its Palatka, Florida plant, MJW was engaged to remove and replace four tanks from its Demineralizer Facility. These tanks remove minerals from water before it is piped to the recovery boiler to produce steam to be used in production. The scope of work included replacement of all inlet and outlet water lines, control valves, electrical controls and other equipment connected to these tanks, prior to replacement of the four tanks targeted for removal.

Extensive planning, scheduling and prefabrication were required to execute this scope of work due to the very specific tank removal sequence mandated by GP. The MJW design team assisted by scanning the area with its FARO laser scanner instrument, producing a 3D model to aid in prefabrication and planning.

Additional challenges included the need to abate hazardous asbestos coating on the tanks, and several vertical and overhead obstacles so the tanks could be manipulated in and out of position. Some of these interferences included utilities which could not be taken out of service without impairing plant production, so the vessels had to be suspended with a 250-ton crane and drifted towards a less congested area before being flown out. The process was then reversed when installing the new vessels into position. The project required that all work be completed prior to the annual outage in October.

The entire scope of work was executed under budget and on schedule by a professional team of MJW supervision, iron workers, pipefitters and subcontracted scaffold and asbestos abatement partners.