Question

4-20. One accident mitigation procedure is called emergency material transfer, in which the material is transported away from the accident site before it becomes involved. We plan on mitigating a crude oil tank fire scenario by pumping the tank empty in 1 hr total time. The crude oil storage tank is 30 m in diameter, and the crude oil is typically at a level of 9 m. The transfer will be accomplished by pumping the crude oil through a 200-mm (internal diameter) new commercial steel pipe to another tank 40 m in diameter and 10 m high. The pipeline represents 50 m of equivalent pipe.

a. Estimate the minimum pump size (in HP) required to pump the entire tank empty in 1 hr. Assume a pump efficiency of 80%.

b. If a 100-HP pump (80% efficient) is available, how long will it take to empty the tank?

c. What conclusions can be drawn about the viability of this approach? The density of the crude oil is 928 kg/m3 with a viscosity of 0.004 kg/m s.

Answer 1

(C) It is not a viable method to approach for this tank. One has to use much smaller tank to make the approach viable as the density and viscosity can not be altered.