DeltaV-Seal™ - The end to fugitive emissions?

Fertilizers are critical to enable the growing global population to be fed. Ongoing increases in energy prices, particularly methane, have made the cost of manufacturing nitrogen and ammonia-based fertilizers particularly high. Anything a manufacturer can do to reduce costs, reduce NOX emissions, and increase reliability has a positive global impact, ensuring a secure and long-term food supply while at the same time increasing reliability and reducing maintenance costs.

Ammonium Nitrate is a challenging chemical to seal, in addition to being extremely hazardous. When Ammonium Nitrate emissions escape from bolted flange joints it crystalizes. These crystals of Ammonium Nitrate are a safety hazard and undesirable. Further to this the Ammonium Nitrate crystals can form inside the pipe, reducing flow and productivity. To remove the crystals of Ammonium Nitrate inside the piping, steam cleaning is utilized. This increases the degradation of legacy semi-metallic gaskets leading to an increased leakage rate, which results in more emissions, more crystals, and a cycle of avoidable costly maintenance.

A leading chemical manufacturer sought a superior gasket to replace the current semi-metallic gasket utilized throughout this specific vacuum system. For this system it is crucial to prevent oxygen from entering the vacuum system as it would cause oxidation of the piping contents and compromise the entire batch of chemicals, leading to it being wasted. The DeltaV-Seal, known for its tightness and durability, prevents oxygen from entering the system through the bolted flange joints. This ensures that the product passed through the piping system is not contaminated by oxygen from the bolted flange joints, providing a superior quality end product.

The United States Clean Air Act (CAA) is the comprehensive federal law regulating emissions from stationary and mobile sources.  Among other things the CAA authorises the United States Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect the public health and public welfare as well as regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants. The DeltaV-Seal effectively removes fugitive emissions fugitive emissions from connections, this case study details how.

Imagine a future where in extreme environments it is possible to model and simulate a gaskets performance and know the lifetime of a bolted flange joint, sealed with a DeltaV-Seal. Pipeotech's Engineering and Technical team have been working to make the modelling and simulation of a gasket a possibility. Being able to simulate the performance of a bolted flange joint, and provide a defined lifetime has huge financial benefit to industry, maximising the time between turnarounds, extracting maximum value from their assets.