Deluge Protection of Vessels

You need a lot of help!

You are a disaster waiting to happen.

Eye washes, PVC conduit in a flammable dike, pump start-up, and now fire suppression?

You are clueless in North America.

What city are you in? I may have relatives nearby, and I want to warn them of the hazard. You have potentially 925 cubic meters of flammable liquids that could explode at any second.

Train car explosion bleve - YouTube

Where do you work? Who is your employer? Who is your insurer.

You scare the crap out of me.

Thank you for the insult. I do not need your input if you think that you don't have any thing to share. I live a block away from you. I guess you can go hug a transformer. It is hot heads like you that think they know all that are the piece of scrap. Where do the most industrial accidents happen? North America. Please keep your opinion to yourself. I have no need for you. You have no clue of me and what I do.

I judged your level of competence from your past posts.

They all demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge of the subject.

"under what conditions would you install emergency eyewash station" Emergency Eye Wash

"please share your experience and tell me of any standard" Cable Conduit Requirement

"Can you think of some other features I need to look out for. If possible, is it possible to provide me a link to any checklist you have used in the past?" Pump Pre-Start Up Walkthrough

It was not an insult, it IS the truth.

Do tell.

If there is a local code governing this, you will need to follow it.

It may, or may not, be based on rational first principles.

Rational first principles would suggest determining how many Btu/h (or analogous units) can impinge on a vessel, such as a from a fuel leak that ignites. Boiling water will absorb about 970 Btu/lb; one can then calculate.

Hazardous area fire suppression systems are outside of my hazardous area experience but if I had to hazard a guess (based on my experience) then I would say that this information is located in an applicable standard.

Have you tried a standard search on the applicable standards website?

One good source that should help is from the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA. I think you would need the codes from NFPA 30. Go to nfpa.org. And as mentioned, you should be able to get guidance from your local and state officials. They are the ones that you have to answer to in the event that there is an emergency.

Something else to keep in mind, in addition to providing adequate water for protection of the containers, is to provide a route for the water to go after it is used. There have been cases when water over flowed protection levees which caused other problems. Good luck.

As an Ex-Chief of a volunteer fire company and with extensive experience in facilities fires you have much to lose if it is only casually designed by someone who is extensively trained and has performed many designs of systems similar to yours. Since designing this system could be in error resulting in death, loss of product, loss of facilities. Loss of business, loss of public relations, loss of good will, etc. You must not start designing this system as one of your first on this subject. When in Industry I always hired a "fire prevention for petroleum sites" consultant. He was expensive but I got what I paid for.

NFPA standards 15, 16, 20, 25, 33, 72, 170, 274, 497, 551, 600, and 780 should be read. Although many of them are not directly applicable, you must take their contents into consideration.

Will you be using foam in the system? This certainly is not for a novice to design. What is the water source and capacity?

CR4 is not the place to ask for what you want! How do you know which answers are correct or just someone who wants to joke around? Only you can determine what the best answers are. Small errors now become big expensive errors in the future.

Good Luck, Old Salt

In the USA, you would need to use spray nozzles (not standard sprinkler heads) that are listed for deluge systems.

Your density would be on the order of 0.35 gallons per minute per square foot of surface area.

Your water supply (duration) would be determined by an analysis performed by a Fire Protection Engineer, but would never be less than 10 minutes.

The nozzle you select will have a "coverage area." You must provide slight overlap.

The design of special hazards systems such as this takes many years to master. The design of a building sprinkler system is demanding enough, however this project is far more complex and carries far more liability.