Can a wind vane be tied to the tank top guardrail?
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There are no tall pipe racks in the tank area, and we need an wind vane. Can it be attached to the guardrail on top of the storage tanks? The pole of the wind vane will be about 2 meters above the railing. Is this acceptable from a lightning protection perspective?
I’m not sure if it meets the standards. We’ve tied it here before.
Don’t you have lightning rods? We have lightning rods, which are attached to the guardrails.
There are high-mounted lights around the tank area, which are likely to also serve to guide lightning
I remember that for storage tanks with steel plate thicknesses exceeding 4 MM, lightning rods are not installed; however, lightning protection grounding is required. I searched online and have copied here the requirements from the Petroleum Storage Tank Design Code: 1. For above-ground horizontal oil tanks equipped with flame arresters, or for above-ground fixed-roof steel oil tanks whose roof thickness is 4 mm or greater, lightning rods should not be installed. Aluminum roof oil tanks and steel oil tanks with a roof thickness of less than 4 mm shall be equipped with lightning rods (nets). Lightning rods (nets) should protect the entire oil tank. 2 Floating roof tanks or internal floating roof tanks should not be equipped with lightning rods, but the floating roof should be electrically connected to the tank body using 2 wires. The connection wires for floating roof oil tanks should be soft copper stranded wires with a cross-sectional area of not less than 25 mm2. For internal floating roof tanks, the connection wires for steel floating roof tanks should be soft copper stranded wires with a cross-sectional area of not less than 16 mm2 ； The connection wires for aluminum floating tank oil tanks should be stainless steel wire ropes with a diameter of not less than 1.8 mm.
We all tie them in this way, so there should be no major problems. Area lightning protection should be taken into account during the design phase; the tank area should have specialized facilities, and all platform levels should be equipped with appropriate grounding systems.
As long as it does not exceed the height of the lightning rod, it is fine. Generally, the protection radius of a lightning rod with a height of less than 30 meters is R=1/2H