Insulation Is Absolutely Critical To The Functioning Of Oil And Chemical Facilities – Desalters
When you take a look at a petroleum refining facility, a chemical, or a petrochemical facility, what you’ll see the most is insulated piping, vessels, and equipment. That is because there really are a lot of insulated pipes, vessels, tanks, and equipment in those facilities. To give you an example, we can talk about a mid-size chemical facility, which can very easily have about 60 miles of insulating piping and about 6 football fields of insulated equipment, tanks, and vessels. And if we consider a medium-sized facility, then the numbers would be even more astonishing. In a medium-sized one, you can witness about 355 miles of insulated piping and about 30 football fields of insulated tanks, equipment, and vessels.
From all those numbers, it is quite obvious that insulation plays a critical role in all oil refining facilities, petrochemical, and chemical plants’ operations. Let’s take a look at why it is so crucial in these facilities.
In these facilities, process control is very important. Insulation is used to slow down the flow of thermal energy in and out of the process, which helps in keeping temperatures stable. Insulation also makes sure that chemical reactions take place safely to construct oil and chemical products
Next thing that needs to be taken care of in chemical and oil refining facilities is energy conservation. If there’s no insulation in these facilities, what will happen is that all of the thermal energy would just simply escape into the atmosphere, which will lead to billions of dollars of loss. Insulation makes sure thermal energy doesn’t escape
In northern climates, insulation provides freeze protection to the facilities. Key equipment that is used to provide cooling, fire protection water, steam condensate, and other watery solutions would simply give in to freezing and become unusable if the right amount of insulation is not present. Facilities can face millions of dollars of damage and environmental problems if this key equipment freezes. When it freezes, both the equipment and pipe can break, something which facilities would not even want to imagine
Another key function of insulation is to safeguard the lives of people working in the plant from burn hazards. It serves as a barrier between the personnel working in the plant and the insulated pipe and equipment operating in the range of 200 degrees Fahrenheit to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit
As you can see, insulation plays one of the crucial roles in chemical and oil refinery facilities. If you want to get pipe insulation done for your facility, get in touch with Desalters L.L.C. as we’re known for providing the best oil refinery pipe insulation in the industry.
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