Inside DSM Demolition’s Eggborough Power Station Project

Demolishing a former two-gigawatt coal-fired power station is a major undertaking even before the work moves below ground. At Eggborough Power Station in North Yorkshire, DSM Demolition faced everything from 80-metre cooling towers and a 198.5-metre chimney to huge reinforced concrete foundations, buried cooling-water pipes and challenging ground conditions.

Awesome Earthmovers revisited the project to see how DSM was tackling one of the most substantial demolition, remediation and re-engineering contracts in its history.

From power generation to demolition

Eggborough Power Station near Selby began generating electricity in 1967 and comprised four 500MW units. After changing ownership several times, the station stopped generating power and ultimately closed in September 2018.

DSM moved onto the site in 2019 following extensive consultation, coordination and planning.

The early stages included clearing material from the coal yard, asbestos removal and preparing the station’s eight 80-metre-high cooling towers for demolition. Weighing around 11,000 tonnes, the towers were brought down in two phases using high-velocity explosives.

The coal bunker building, known as Bunker Bay, followed, together with the turbine hall and sections of the boiler house. The final explosive demolition included the station’s 198.5-metre (650ft) chimney stack and main boiler house.

Crushers were subsequently brought onto the site to process and recycle concrete and heavy foundation material generated during the works.

Heavy demolition equipment at Eggborough

DSM deployed a substantial mixed fleet for the project, including demolition-specification excavators and specialist attachments.

Machines used during the works included 250-tonne high-reach excavators, 90-tonne Hyundai HX900Ls, Hyundai 380s, Hitachi ZX690s, a Kobelco SK210 hybrid excavator and several Kobelco SK300s.

Concrete pulverisers, shears, grabs and other demolition attachments were used across the site.

During the later slab and foundation removal phase, DSM was operating around 30 items of plant ranging from 25-tonne to 90-tonne excavators, supplied by Molson Group.

Breaking out Eggborough’s foundations

Although the above-ground demolition was immense in scale, much of the project’s difficulty lay beneath the surface.

The size, depth and strength of the power station foundations required DSM to invest heavily in nine-tonne hydraulic hammers and Steelwrist equipment to maximise the productivity of its larger excavators.

Maintaining breaker availability was also essential. Spare units allowed attachments to be swapped out for preventative and corrective maintenance without unnecessarily interrupting production.

Another major challenge came from the station’s cooling-water infrastructure. Large steel pipes were encased within the concrete, with sections containing eight 1.8-metre-diameter pipes positioned side by side.

Because the pipes sat within the water table, their tops had to be cut open before they could be filled with Class 6A aggregate to create a dry earthworks formation layer.

Re-engineering the site

Ground conditions created an entirely different set of challenges.

The presence of Sherwood Formation sandstone was advantageous because of its free-draining characteristics and its ability to recover after becoming slurry during wet winter conditions.

Working around the water table was less straightforward. DSM also had to condition the sand between layers so that material could achieve the required 95% air-void specification, keeping it within the optimum moisture content envelope long enough to pass testing.

At the time of the Awesome Earthmovers visit, DSM forecast approximately 162,000m³ of raw concrete movement, 350,000 tonnes of aggregate movement and 549,000m³ of disturbed sand re-engineering.

Combined, the project involved material movement on an enormous scale, with concrete breakout alone expected to reach around 350,000 tonnes.

More than demolition

Eggborough demonstrates the wider scope of modern demolition contracting.

DSM’s work extends beyond structural demolition into decommissioning, dismantling, asbestos removal, contaminated-land remediation, recycling and complete site regeneration. The company also operates its own environmental division and has held a full asbestos licence continuously since 1990.

DSM is a sister company of regeneration specialist St Francis Group, which acquired the Eggborough site.

For Awesome Earthmovers, the project offered a close look at what happens after the spectacular explosive demolitions are complete: months of heavy excavation, concrete processing, foundation removal and ground engineering required to transform a former power station into land ready for its next use.

Read the full Awesome Earthmovers feature

This article is based on a feature originally published in Issue [XX] of Awesome Earthmovers. Read the complete feature, including the full story and photography, in the digital magazine.

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