Water Eductors for Chemical Tankers
Chemical Tankers are specialized ships used to transport various Chemicals throughout the world. Many of these chemical are a specialized cargo and needs careful handling due to its flammability and tendency to ignite.
That’s why loading and storage of Chemicals onboard the Chemical Tanker is done as per set guidelines and procedures and vacuum plays an important role in it.
Water Eductors are essentially Liquid jet Vacuum Ejectors that operate on the basis of the jet Venturi principle.
Water Eductors utilize the energy in pumped water for their operation and can be put to use to create vacuum conditions at its suction inlet.
Chemical Tankers utilize water eductors to create Vacuum for following purposes:
In the inerting process followed for the Chemical tanks.
Before loading the Chemical into tanks it is important to remove the oxygen and moisture present inside the tanks. To accomplish it the air inside the Chemical tanks is evacuated by the Water Eductor and inert gas is filed in inside the tank through repeated processes.
Water Eductors tend to have large suction flows at ambient & low vacuum pressures, this helps the Water Eductor in performing rapid evacuation initially. This ability to generate large suction flows are particularly suited in evacuating the Chemical tanks quickly during the inerting process.
Water Eductors are perfectly suited for Chemical Tankers because of their below inherent characteristics
• Available in Bronze material – makes it possible to operate with Sea-water which is abundantly available on a Chemical tanker
• The water Eductor commonly operates with wide range of motive water pressure from 2.5 bar(a) to 7 bar(a). The required pressure can be easily provided by the Ballast pumps / Fire Pumps onboard a Chemical Tanker – hence no additional infrastructure is required for operation.
• Low Evacuation time during inerting process of Chemical tanks
• Water Eductors do not contain any moving parts and have large internal passage areas, hence are not vulnerable to liquid entry or clogging by solid particles.
• As they have no moving parts, maintenance requirements are very less. Also it reduces largely the risk of abrupt breakdowns, helps in maintaining the regular production schedule