Should liquefied hydrocarbon spheres be sprayed with water in summer or use cooling gel?
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Should liquefied hydrocarbon spheres be sprayed with water in summer or use cooling gel? Is it the owner who decides this, or the design institute? Which specialty usually determines the design institute? What are the requirements regarding the amount of water used for spraying in summer, the timing of activation, etc.?
I learned a bit about it. Our company is located in Urumqi, where the temperatures are quite high in summer, but there are no sprinkler systems in place. What to use specifically will depend on the local conditions there.
We used spray cooling before, but we haven’t used it for many years now.
Why not use it? Is it unnecessary, or are they too lazy to go through the process?
It’s an unsolvable problem. Usually, insulating foam is used around spherical tanks; some tanks also have insulation measures in place. However, in certain areas in the south, such measures are clearly not sufficient, and it is quite normal for the temperature inside the spherical tanks to reach 40°C. At this point, the owner will use fire-fighting water to cool the spherical tank. However, according to fire safety regulations, fire-fighting water cannot be used for other purposes; in other words, doing so is not compliant with the rules. But it’s not possible to simply leave the existing fire-fighting sprinklers unused and install another set instead. So everyone just turned a blind eye and got by, as long as nothing went wrong, it was fine. Do anyone else have any good ideas?
That’s indeed the case; I posted this to ask if there are any other good solutions. Especially when using fire-fighting water for spraying, it requires the owner to act flexibly; even the design drawings don’t know how to handle this situation
Where is this configuration? Is this kind of treatment also used for spherical tanks at normal temperature?
Our butadiene spheres are made in this way: the external circulation is cooled using chilled water to prevent self-polymerization when the temperature rises. Spraying was also used in the past; one problem with it is water waste and poor effectiveness, while another issue is that moss grows all over the sphere, affecting its appearance.
The situation with butadiene is different; it tends to polymerize easily at high temperatures, so it is not suitable for long-term storage. Additionally, measures such as nitrogen purging or cooling must be considered. As for propylene, propane, butane, etc., there is no such problem.