The truck transporting the crane arrives early on Wednesday, September 2. Grey clouds over Adlershof, but that doesn't stop the team from setting up the crane.
A new cooling tower flying to BESSY's roof
The crane is installed directly in front of the truck sluice of the storage ring hall.
The puzzle begins, the swivel arm (blue) is over 90m long.
The crane weighs 96 tons, plus additional 90 tons counterweight (see picture). The cooling tower itself weighs 2 tons.
Now all is ready and waiting for the mission to start on Thursday 3rd September.
Warming up : the frame on which the cooling tower will later stand is lifted onto the roof. It is Thursday before nine o'clock, the sky is blue, the sun is shining!
Even from the Ruska Ufer it can not be overlooked: there is something happening at BESSY II. Such a voluminous crane is used at HZB for the first time.
After a few final touches, the time has come: around 9:30 am the cooling tower is lifted into the air.
For the admirative observers it goes almost too fast. The cooling tower flies...
...and floats towards the BESSY II courtyard, over the green roof.
Straight as a die it goes towards the installation lot.
The installation team is already waiting there, now the precision work continues. Around 10:15 a.m. the cooling tower is in its designated place.
Let me introduce you to BESSY's fourth cooling tower!
Here a little sneak peak into the inside of the cooling tower.
Soon after the "exciting part" is over and the team starts dismantling again the crane. The parts are carefully disassembled and wait next to BESSY II for their next mission.
Early September a huge crane near BESSY II could be seen from afar. A series of pictures for you to discover the exciting installation of the fourth cooling tower.
"We have been planning this for more than a year," explains Christian Jung, who is coordinating the work with Ingo Müller during the shutdown of the electron storage ring BESSY II.
Both watch with great interest as the twelve specialists assemble the crane, attach the cooling tower, then swing it over the roof and finally install it. Both are certain that the transport of the fourth cooling tower works only with detailed planning and a great deal of precision. "We have never needed such a large crane before," says Ingo Müller. Some HZB colleagues come by, pull out cell phones and capture these moments: you don't see something like that every day.
The installation of the fourth cooling tower, which is now safely located in the courtyard in the middle of the ring building, is one of the biggest jobs during the shutdown.
Read more about the shutdown period: The shutdown at BESSY II: busy activity in the ring
Pictures: Christian Feiler, Ingo Müller and Florentine Krawatzek.
- The future of corals – what X-rays can tell usThis summer, it was all over the media. Driven by the climate crisis, the oceans have now also passed a critical point, the absorption of CO2 is making the oceans increasingly acidic. The shells of certain sea snails are already showing the first signs of damage. But also the skeleton structures of coral reefs are deteriorating in more acidic conditions. This is especially concerning given that corals are already suffering from marine heatwaves and pollution, which are leading to bleaching and finally to the death of entire reefs worldwide. But how exactly does ocean acidification affect reef structures?
Prof. Dr. Tali Mass, a marine biologist from the University of Haifa, Israel, is an expert on stony corals. Together with Prof. Dr. Paul Zaslansky, X-ray imaging expert from Charité Berlin, she investigated at BESSY II the skeleton formation in baby corals, raised under different pH conditions. Antonia Rötger spoke online with the two experts about the results of their recent study and the future of coral reefs.
- Energy of charge carrier pairs in cuprate compoundsHigh-temperature superconductivity is still not fully understood. Now, an international research team at BESSY II has measured the energy of charge carrier pairs in undoped La₂CuO₄. Their findings revealed that the interaction energies within the potentially superconducting copper oxide layers are significantly lower than those in the insulating lanthanum oxide layers. These results contribute to a better understanding of high-temperature superconductivity and could also be relevant for research into other functional materials.
- Electrocatalysis with dual functionality – an overviewHybrid electrocatalysts can produce green hydrogen, for example, and valuable organic compounds simultaneously. This promises economically viable applications. However, the complex catalytic reactions involved in producing organic compounds are not yet fully understood. Modern X-ray methods at synchrotron sources such as BESSY II, enable catalyst materials and the reactions occurring on their surfaces to be analysed in real time, in situ and under real operating conditions. This provides insights that can be used for targeted optimisation. A team has now published an overview of the current state of knowledge in Nature Reviews Chemistry.