If you were wondering why fire marshals want equipment certifications, this is it. Questionable materials, unreliable equipment designs, off spec builds, infinite process condition and fluid combinations, material compatibility, unknown operator qualifications, and the occasional leak, spark, dropped component, sliced gasket, or power failure.
A lot has to go right to prevent things from going boom. These are the things that keep fire marshals up at night.
Word of advice on new builds: component quality, traceability, and source of supply is incredibly important when trying to get a system reviewed and approved.
Yeah I mean for what it’s worth, ASME does not allow ratings to be dependent on having one side of a wall pressurized except for in an extreme few circumstances. Reason being is that if you have a rapid and unexpected pressure loss on one side, your overpressure device won’t be able to keep it from going pop. But the vessel itself only ever sees gauge pressure between the vessel and jacket.
After reading ththread, I still don’t have clarity on the cause of failure.
Is it most likely somehow the (non water based as water expands when colder as far as i know) heat tranfer fluid somehow was blocked from exiting at the inlet and outlet ports and thus started to expand, causeing the inplosion?
Id love to get better understanding to avoid the root cause.