The part of a desulfurization tower where the lifting lugs or similar things are mounted should be strong enough to withstand the weight of complete tower to ensure the safety of lifting operation in the process of installation.The design of lift-ing scheme for a desulfurization tower retrofit project is presented.Finite element method is used to analyze and optimize the lo-cal structure around the lifting points.The software AM(Aveva Marine)is used to build the finite element model of the tower,which saves the workload otherwise necessary geometric modeling.The finite element analysis on the structural response of the desulfurization tower during the lifting process is completed by software FEMAP.In order to control the computing workload,the tower model is divided into several parts with defined boundary constraints and loading conditions according to the lifting scheme.The lifting operation was successful with the help of the calculation.