Two boiler houses and a 120-metre reinforced concrete chimney removed 60 metres from an energised 220 kV switchyard.
- Client
- State Power Utility
- Location
- Maharashtra, India
- Duration
- 8 months
- Material handled
- 12,700 t
Demolition of two retired boiler houses, associated ductwork and ESP structures, and a 120 m reinforced concrete chimney at a decommissioned thermal power station, executed alongside an energised switchyard that remained in service throughout.
Scope of works
- Boiler pressure part and drum removal
- ESP and ductwork dismantling
- 120 m RCC chimney demolition
- Turbine hall structural demolition
- Ash handling system removal
- Foundation removal and site levelling
The 220 kV switchyard 60 metres from the chimney base could not be de-energised. Any conductive dust plume, uncontrolled debris or vibration transmission into the switchyard foundations carried an unacceptable risk of a regional supply event.
The chimney had a documented lean of 340 mm at the crown and internal flue liner deterioration that made it unsafe to assume the shell behaved as designed.
The boiler houses contained legacy insulation with confirmed asbestos content across a large proportion of the pressure part surfaces.
Explosive felling was assessed and rejected on exclusion distance grounds. The chimney was taken down by top-down mechanical demolition using a platform-mounted crusher, keeping every fragment inside a 12-metre drop radius and transmitting negligible vibration.
A continuous survey monitoring regime tracked the chimney lean throughout demolition, with defined stop criteria at 15 mm additional movement. Switchyard foundations were monitored for vibration against a threshold agreed with the utility's transmission engineers.
Asbestos removal was completed under full licensed containment across both boiler houses before any structural demolition began, with clearance certification issued per enclosure and independently verified.
Dust was managed with three atomised cannons operating continuously during chimney reduction plus wheel washing on all egress routes. Boundary monitoring recorded no exceedance across the eight-month programme.
12,700 t
Material recovered
120 m, top-down
Chimney demolished
Zero
Switchyard outages
Zero
Dust threshold exceedances
4,100 m² certified
Asbestos removed
Equipment mobilised against the engineered method for this programme. Where the correct machine was not in our own fleet, it was brought in rather than substituted.
- Platform-mounted chimney crusher
- 65 m high-reach excavator
- 250 t mobile crane
- Atomised dust suppression cannons
- Continuous vibration and survey monitoring
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