New routes to the Sinai – final breakthrough in gigantic road tunnels at the Suez Canal
Jan 25, 2018
On the Christmas weekend, Egyptian President H.E. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rang in a new era for the Sinai Peninsula: on Saturday, December 23, 2017, S-960 (Ø 13,020 mm), the third of four Herrenknecht Mixshields, completed tunnelling for the first of two new twin-tube road tunnels under the Suez Canal at Ismailia.
The tunnels at Port Said and Ismailia, designed to link the Sinai Peninsula more closely to the Egyptian heartland in future, will open up new economic opportunities. Instead of spending up to 5 days in long car queues for the ferry, crossing the Suez Canal via the efficient tunnels will only take 10 minutes in future.
On the 2017 Christmas weekend, Egyptian President H.E. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi inaugurated very significant development projects at the Suez Canal. These included two gigantic twin-tube road tunnels under the international trading artery. A total of four tunnel tubes were driven in about 1.5 years for the new, efficient transport links under the artificial waterway.
The shells are now almost completed: two road tunnels were built north of Ismailia and run under the old and new Suez Canal. Two more cross beneath the canal south of Port Said. With this key large-scale project, Egypt is expanding infrastructure immensely important for world trade. The efficient connection of the canal cities to the waterway's eastern shore will simplify trade activities, facilitate traffic and support economic development of the region.
On December 23, 2017, the third Herrenknecht Mixshield S-960, with a diameter of 13.02 meters, completed the final drive for the road tunnel project at Ismailia on the Suez Canal. For the new Suez crossings, H.E. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ordered a total of four identical state-of-the-art tunnel boring machines (TBMs, S-958 – S-961) from Herrenknecht.
Under the direction of the construction companies Joint Venture Arab Contractors / Orascom and Joint Venture Petrojet / Concord / CMC, in the past 19 months these giant tunnelling machines safely produced the tunnels near the Egyptian cities of Ismailia and Port Said at depths of up to 60 meters and at a water pressure of up to 6 bar. The high-tech machines from Schwanau bored and built 15.3 kilometers of new tunnel during this time.
To allow for a smooth project progress during the very complex tunnel operations, Herrenknecht AG trained 40 Egyptian engineers in Schwanau and on the jobsites. For optimal support of the tunnelling processes, Herrenknecht also provided the tunnelling teams with comprehensive services and supplied key peripheral equipment through the Herrenknecht subsidiaries VMT, MSD, Formwork, H+E and TMS.
Egypt's President H.E. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Dr.-Ing. E.h. Martin Herrenknecht, Chairman of the Board of Management of Herrenknecht AG, were personally present at the final TBM breakthrough of the Mixshield S-960 at Ismailia. H.E. President al-Sisi emphasized that the project was crucial to Egypt's future. The previously neglected economy of Sinai Peninsula can grow as a result.
The tunnels will shorten the time for crossing the Suez Canal immensely: currently this can take up to five days, as queues of traffic to the ferry back up for miles. With the new tunnel connections, soon it will take only 10 minutes.
Project Data: New routes to the Sinai – final breakthrough in gigantic road tunnels at the Suez Canal
MACHINE DATA / PROJECT DATA S-958 - S-961 ISMAILIA / PORT SAID ROAD TUNNELS
Machine type: 4x Mixshield
- Shield diameter: 13,020 mm
- Drive power: 3,500 kW
- Torque: 16,779 kNm
- Tunnel length: 2x 4,800 m, 2 x 2,800 m
- Geology: heterogeneous ground, clay, sand
- Customer: Government of the Republic of Egypt
- Construction companies: Tunnel Joint Venture Road Tunnel Port Said Arab Contractors / Orascom and Tunnel Joint Venture Road Tunnel Ismailia Petrojet / Concord / CMC
More News and Articles
Aug 28, 2024
News
ITpipes Secures $20M to Transform Water Infrastructure Management
ITpipes announced it has secured $20 million in equity financing from Trilogy Search Partners and Miramar Equity Partners.
Known for its trusted and user-friendly platform, ITpipes …
Aug 26, 2024
News
Professor Dr.-Ing. Dietrich Stein
With deep sadness we announce the loss of our founder and partner Prof Dr Dietrich Stein at the age of 85.
Engineers around the globe are thankful for his dedication to the inventions in the fields of sewers, …
Aug 26, 2024
News
PPI Releases New Installation Guide for PE4710 Pipe
PPI’s MAB-11-2024 Covers HDPE Water Pipelines Up to 60-in. Diameter and 10,000-ft Long Pulls
Developed by the Municipal Advisory Board (MAB) – and published with the help of the members of the …
Aug 23, 2024
News
Faster wide-scale leak detection now within reach
Mass deployment of connected leak loggers is being made possible by the latest technology, writes Tony Gwynne, global leakage solutions director, Ovarro
Water companies in England and Wales are …
Aug 21, 2024
News
Kraken awakens customer service potential in water
The innovative customer service platform Kraken has made a successful transfer from energy to water. Ahead of their presentation at UKWIR’s annual conference, Portsmouth Water chief executive …
Aug 19, 2024
News
Predicting the toxicity of chemicals with AI
Researchers at Eawag and the Swiss Data Science Center have trained AI algorithms with a comprehensive ecotoxicological dataset. Now their machine learning models can predict how toxic chemicals are …
Aug 16, 2024
News
Goodbye water loss: Trenchless pipe renewal in Brazil
Pipe renewal in Brazil
How do you stop water loss through leaks in old pipe systems without major environmental impacts and restrictions? The answer: with trenchless technology, or more precisely …
Aug 14, 2024
Article
Impact of high-temperature heat storage on groundwater
In a recently launched project, the aquatic research institute Eawag is investigating how the use of borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) affects the surrounding soil, the groundwater …
Aug 12, 2024
News
Watercare completes East Coast Bays sewer link
Watercare has successfully finished the final connection on the East Coast Bays link sewer at Windsor Park in New Zealand.
Much of the East Coast Bays sewer link was installed using horizontal directional …
Aug 09, 2024
Article
Innovative water solutions for sustainable cities
Cities need to become more sustainable and use their water resources more efficiently. Managing water in local small-scale cycles is one possible solution. A new white paper by Eawag, the University …
Aug 07, 2024
Article
How digital technologies contribute to universal drinking water
Digital water technologies have an important role in ensuring universal access to safe drinking water by 2030, that is according to a new report from the World Health Organisation. …
Aug 05, 2024
News
Knowledge transfer on sustainable water infrastructure in India
India’s fast-growing cities need an efficient infrastructure for water supply and wastewater disposal. A research cooperation, is therefore supporting the development of a sustainable …
Contact
Herrenknecht AG
Schlehenweg 2
77963s Schwanau
Germany
Phone:
+49 7824-302-0
Fax:
+49 7824-3403