What we were asked to do
As part of the design of Terminal 3 of “Port 2” in Tangier, Morocco, a major Italian architecture firm engaged Greenpipe to identify the best solution for rainwater drainage across a 14-hectare surface area.
The context
Tanger Med is a global logistics hub located on the Strait of Gibraltar in Morocco, 40 km from Europe and connected to 186 ports worldwide.
It consists of “Port 1” and “Port 2”, the latter still under construction.
Tanger Med 1 comprises:
- two terminals, TC1 and TC2
- a total surface area of 80 hectares
- 1,600 meters of quays
- a nominal capacity of 3 million CONTAINERS per year.
The project
Tanger Med 2 is currently under construction.
It represents an investment of €1.3 billion and will also consist of two terminals, TC3 and TC4.
With its 2,800 meters of new quays, it will provide additional capacity of 6 million CONTAINERS per year, enabling the Port of TANGER MED to become Africa’s most important logistics hub, the largest in the Mediterranean by capacity, and among the world’s leading ports.
€1.3
billion
2,800 meters of
new quays
6 million
containers
The image shows the six different areas, the drainage lines (horizontal, in light blue), and the collection and discharge pipes (vertical, dashed in light blue).
Greenpipe's solution: BIG I nS 400 H630 F900
As part of the design of TC3, Greenpipe was engaged to develop a solution for rainwater drainage for the quay of the new terminal.
This request immediately appeared very challenging, and our technical department certainly rose to the occasion. The first phase of the work consisted of calculating the flow rate to be drained, starting from the TC3 plan that the client had provided.
The quay, totaling approximately 14 hectares, was divided into different zones (six in total) following, for convenience, the grid formed by the gantry crane rails, and for each of these the incoming rainfall flows were determined.
Based on the results obtained, the second phase of the work was to:
- select the channel model that could collect and discharge this water in the most “hydraulically” safe manner, sizing the section and the number of outlets for each section.
- define the most suitable grating type for the intended use.
Given the scale of the project, to simplify installation and optimize work schedules, a “self-supporting” channel model was selected, which does not require additional supports to withstand operating loads—a solution that proved successful and was appreciated by the end client (the Moroccan contractor executing the works).
The final design, subsequently refined by the designer (and therefore slightly different from that shown above) based on site boundary conditions, resulted in the need for 3,440 meters of BIG I nS 400 H630 channels with F900 class Big47 400 gratings.
The system is equipped with a Declaration of Performance (DoP) as required by European Regulation 305, which certifies that the product meets the requirements imposed by the reference standard EN1433.
Project figures
The receipt of the official order from the contractor was greeted with great satisfaction by the entire Greenpipe staff: from the technicians who conducted the hydrological study and sized the hydraulic works represented by the drainage channel and discharge pipe system, from the sales team who determined costs with extreme precision to achieve an optimal selling price, from logistics who identified the best possible solution for transporting the products from the production site in Italy to the construction site and managed the administrative aspects, and from the purchasing/production department which not only ensured that the necessary materials were made available in the shortest possible time but also established the timing of all necessary activities to avoid delivery delays—a task made more challenging by the tight delivery deadlines required by the client.
In this regard, some figures can give an idea of the effort involved:
All managed between mid-October 2019 and mid-February 2020.
