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Vessel Cleaning – 2.5 tonnes of solid styrene removed

Rock hard deposit removed in under 3 days

Summary

An occluder vessel within the UK base of an international petrochemicals giant had become blocked with 2.5 tonnes of solid styrene following a batch error. Tube Tech was contacted after traditional high pressure water jetting contractors had spent 5 days trying, and failing, to remove the blockage.

Challenge

Styrene mixing vessel base blocked with 2.5 tonnes of set styrene.
Rock hard deposit
Man entry into vessel only allowed for removal of large lumps of deposit
Traditional high pressure water jetting cleaning contractors had spent 5 days on vessel cleaning contract with no success and had predicted it would take another 8 days to complete the contract.
Hazardous deposit
Tube Tech was allocated 3 days to remove all deposit from vessel.

Solution

Tube Tech used their unique convertible Wysper™ pump and took a variety of cleaning heads so that trials could be conducted on site.
Vessel cleaning took place from working platform around the vessel via a 16 inch manhole on top of the vessel.
A remote indexing system was used to remotely clean the vessel from a distance of 2.5 to 3 metres.
After trialling a variety of cleaning heads the Tube Tech SafeJet™ was used as it ripped through the solid styrene within the vessel without damaging the vessel surface.
Large lumps of deposit were removed manually.
All deposit was removed and the vessel cleaned back to operation standards in just 2.5 days.

Tube Tech comment

Peter Lord, Technical Sales: “Our client needed our systems to work as they had wasted time and money with their previous contractor. As always Tube Tech arrived on site prepared for any eventuality and we once again were able to demonstrate our fast, safe and effective vessel cleaning abilities.”

Clients can be contacted via Tube Tech for references.

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