Today’s plant owners are faced with unique challenges as a result of a severely deteriorating infrastructure. The recurring Corrosion Costs and Preventative Strategies estimates the annual direct cost of corrosion for infrastructure and plant to be $6.43 billion to $10.15 billion. As a result, there are tremendous opportunities for FRP component parts that are corrosion resistant, lightweight, and can be rapidly installed or replace.

Features and Benefits

DYNAGLASS FRP composite component parts deliver viable solutions to meet critical needs for rehabilitation of existing plant and structures. FRP materials have been used successfully for over 50 years in a variety of demanding applications, including the marine, and chemical plants.

Primary benefits of FRP equipment include:

• Durability (highly resistant to corrosion and fatigue)
• Lightweight
• High strength
• Rapid Installation
• Lower or competitive life-cycle cost
• High quality manufacturing processes under controlled environments

Compared with steel components, DYNAGLASS FRP typically weigh 50% less, can be erected twice as fast and have service lives that can be two to three times greater.

Emission of oil vapour or Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), into atmosphere from bulk storage tanks is a known fact throughout the distribution industry worldwide.

Emission of oil vapour represents:

1) Considerable monetary loss termed as “wastages”

2) Harmful long-term consequences to environment.

The individual light hydrocarbons (HC) compounds of VOC reacts with NOx in the ozone layer. When exposed to sunlight in some cases a strong poison known as H2S becomes evident in oil vapour thus with the emission of this substance, contaminates the environment.

“The Environmental Protection Agency (API) has adopted a goal of 30% reduction of the emission of Non Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOC) at the end of 1999 compared to 1989. In MARPOL Annex VI of 1997 it is stated that the individual countries are free to decide on requirements, and to initiate efforts for the reduction of NMVOC emission in their harbours and territorial waters. Many countries have adopted a national overall of 30% reduction in NMVOC emission. Plans are made to require emission control be carried to further 37% reduction by 2010”.

INTERNAL FLOATING ROOF

Vapour recovery and other systems were implemented. However cost of implementation and the subsequent cost of operations proved to be complex not practical. This comparison was made based on the cost of installing an internal floating roof inside a storage tank.

Aluminium Internal Floating Roof (IFR):

The aluminium Internal Floating Roofs (IFR) have been used with savings of up to 90% efficiencies. However, deterioration from material corrosion occurs due to electrolysis which is a

chemical decomposition by electric action from the holding tank and fittings used.

Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM:

Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM was successfully introduced in the Petroleum Industry in 2003. Made entirely from polymer composite material, Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM withstands the typical harsh environment in the chemical and process industries.

Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM is developed with the use of high-grade epoxy resins and glass fibres commonly known as Glass Reinforced Epoxy (GRE).

Advantages of Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM compared with Vapour Recovery systems:

• Needs no maintenance

• Has as a life expectancy of 30 (thirty) years

• Manufactured in accordance to API 650-H

• Very low initial investment cost

• Can be implementation on a tank-by-tank basis as an when required

• Flexible as implementation can be added at various stages of tank farm

• Needs no refrigeration to operate

• Savings from vapour loss due to pay for implementation costs

(Typical payback of investment : 2 to 3 years)

• No need expensive pumps, pipelines and vapour recovery condensers plants to build and maintain

• Planning for future expansion by increasing capacity of recovery plant becomes redundant

Glass Reinforced Epoxy(GRE) Internal Floating Roofs(IFR) have been introduced as a better alternative to the steel & aluminium types which is commonly used in the tank storage industry.

Main advantage of GRE-IFR is that it is lighter than steel and stronger than aluminum.

GRE material is preferred in situations where steel or aluminium are not compatible with the stored products or when mechanical mixers are installed and aluminium IFR not sufficiently robust to withstand the mechanical forces of the high-speed mixers.

Full contact GRE-IFR once installed can be considered to be free from any maintenance and will perform well for the service life of the tank.

At present there are two types of GRE full contact honeycomb sandwich IFR available in the market.

1. The field installed conventional system and
2. The prefabricated system.

The installation of the conventional system is done entirely on site. As the quantity of resin matrix needed to fabricate the IFR can be rather large; for example a 36 meter diameter the liquid resin for the IFR is about 10 tons. There are concerns that tank owners need to be aware of:

VENTILATION

• The environmental condition in the tank during fabrication needs to be controlled by very large blowers with high volume of air flow to meet the emissions levels allowed. 20ppm as specified by OSHA(Occupational Health and Safety) Standards

LIGHTING

• In order to produce a void-free laminate, an evenly lit and glare free condition is mandatory. Without the proper lighting, air bubbles or voids of air pockets, foreign matter, etc., can become encapsulated in the laminate and the product quality cannot meet specified and accepted standards

TEMPERATURE

• Room temperature cured epoxies are used in both cases. In order to achieve proper curing, the ambient temperature in the tank, has to be controlled. This is especially important for the large diameter tanks. Controlling the temperature is challenge since the weather and environment can be different according to the location of the tank

The difference with Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM and the conventional GRE-IFR is that 90% of the fabrication is done in the factory’s controlled environment and goes through stringent quality tests before shipment.

SHOP FABRICATION

• Considering all these factors our engineers at Dynaglass developed the prefabricated Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM (Patent protected). The system mandates that all components to be manufactured at the plant in under controlled environmental conditions to overcome all the above challenges. This ensures that the product is delivered with consistent quality

SHIPPED BY CONTAINER

• The panels are designed to fit perfectly in shipping containers

ADDED STIFFNESS CONTRIBUTED BY GRID STRUCTURE

• Like a jigsaw, the joints are laid in a grid pattern and then laminated by our patent protected system which increases the global stiffness of the IFR structure

INSTALLATION & LEAK TEST

• Installing the Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM is systematic and quick
• The prefabricated parts accounts for about 90% of the IFR while connecting them in the tank only makes up for 10%
• All pre-fabricated parts are lowered into the tank and are located according to the positions indicated in the engineering drawings of the individual tank
• Next the various parts are connected together by our patent protected lamination process
• Finally all connections are leak tested by air pressure and soapy water to ensure that all joints are leak proof

More Information:

• For good composite practice according to British Standard(BS.4994), it is recommended that all large structures should be prefabricate to transportable sub–assemblies and shipped to site to be assembled at final destination. The prefabricated assemblies are integrated inside the tank. This is to ensure the portion of the site work is minimal

• The reduced scope of the work within the tank will ensure better control of the resin matrix and proper curing of the composite is ensured under all weather conditions

• Contamination from falling foreign matter on the project during fabrication can be easily prevented, as parts are prefabricated. The entrapment of foreign matter like rust scales, loose paint falling from steel roof structures, sand and dirt particles from workers’ footwear etc. is controlled. This is to ensure consistent quality at all times

• An independent test on one Dynaglass VAPOLOC^TM installation has shown that the actual emission-Bio levels recorded are much lower than those required by OSHA

• With the reduced quantities of resin matrix required at site, other benefits such as fewer workers are needed and higher safety standards for workers is easily achieved

• A shorter installation time and fast handing over of projects equates to a shorter down time of your tank, guaranteed!