After unloading,
tower sections are racked together side by side.
After racking,
all movement through the plant takes place using overhead cranes.
Pickling,
rinsing and fluxing tanks are all located on one side of the plant, while
the
zinc kettle
is located behond the wall on the opposide end of the building. This is
done to keep
as much heat at possible contained to one part of the building.
The first dip
takes place in the pickling tanks which contains Hydrochloric acid.
This tank
also contains various pickling inhibitors to fully remove surface rust
and
mill scale,
and also acts as a degreaser for the steel.
After 40-50
minutes of soak time, the sections are lifted from the pickling tank.
The vertical
members seen in this photo are several 5 ft. foundation legs that
were included
with this run.
The sections
are then carried over to the next tank, which contains pure water
to cleanse
the acid off the surface of the steel. This takes only 10 minutes.
After immersion
in water, the load is carried to the flux tank, in which the steel is
dipped into
a flux solution to properly "key" the steel for the hot-dip zinc application.
Without the
flux first applied, the 840 degree zinc would not adhere to the surface.
The final dipping
process, showing the sections beginning to emerge from the zinc.
The kettle
shown here is one of the largest in the United States, measuring 53' in
length.
As the sections
rise higher, the workers use the scraping tools to clean off
unwanted drips
of excess zinc from the edges and corners.
Now fully galvanized
to ASTM-A123 & ASTM-A153 specs, after several minutes
of immersion
time in the zinc kettle.
Instead of
water quenching, the sections are left to cool using air temperature.
Shown here
are tower sections 2-8. The sections appear quite small compared
to the size
of these huge dip tanks.
On it's own,
this is Section 1, with a 48" face spread at the leg apexs.
Another shot
of Section 1
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