The world's biggest atmospheric tower for a giant oil refinery -- with key parts made of special stainless steel manufactured by Taiyuan Iron & Steel Group -- begins its journey to its new home in Nigeria. TISCO is based in Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi province. [Photo/sxrb.com]

The world's biggest atmospheric tower for a massive oil refinery – containing key special stainless steel parts made by Taiyuan Iron & Steel Group based in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province – is going places. 

Local officials said it recently left the port of Zhangjiagang, a county-level city in East China's Jiangsu province, bound for the African country of Nigeria. 

The atmospheric tower, used in heavy crude oil processing, is 120 meters in height, 12 meters in diameter and 2,250 metric tons in weight. 

With those sort of dimensions, it has smashed previous world records for the diameter, length and single unit weight of an atmospheric tower. 

The Taiyuan steel manufacturer also known as TISCO, joined in the atmospheric tower construction at the beginning of 2018. 

Following lots of communications with the client on materials, techniques, the production schedule and its system certification, the company completed the steel production with high quality and high technical requirements on time. 

The atmospheric tower will be installed in the Nigeria's Aliko Dangote's refinery complex in Lagos, the world's biggest single-series facility with annual refining capacity of 32.5 million tons of crude oil. 

Currently, Nigeria's annual crude oil refining capacity is 16.5 million tons. After the new refinery swings into production, it will boost Nigeria's output by two thirds, reversing the country's long-term dependence on imported fuel and supporting the downstream refining market in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. 

Company executives said that TISCO has been expanding its business with countries along the Belt and Road in recent years, exporting top steel products used in the petroleum, chemicals, shipbuilding, mining, railway, automobile and food industries. 

They said to date, it has supplied 37 countries and regions involved in Belt and Road Initiative and won bids for more than 60 international projects. These include a nuclear power plant in Karachi in Pakistan, the Malaysian RAPID petroleum refining project and the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge project.