When you have to work with any material or substance that has been pressurized to more than 15 pounds per square inch gauge, you need to use special containers and equipment. Vessels that have been designed to do this are called horizontal pressure vessels or stainless steel pressure vessels. These are used in a variety of industries and for different reasons. When you have to use horizontal pressure vessels, there is an increased risk in the storage. There are ways to reduce the risk. To do this, you have to make sure everyone on staff know what safety and maintenance procedures they need to understand and follow.
To avoid problems and possible injuries, it is important to set and follow guidelines for everyone working with and around horizontal and vertical pressure vessels. Here are a few tips to help:
- Train your people well. It is impossible to keep everyone safe if you do not provide your people with the right training on your safety protocol. You can start by learning what the dangers and threats are. Learn what to do if a breach of one of your horizontal pressure vessels. Next, arrange for a briefing for all your workers on what you learned and what they will be expected to do should a crisis happen.
- Make adherence to your safety plan be mandatory. It is important that you set a good example for your workers and have to take care to follow all of your rules yourself. You can include testing to make sure they all know what the protocols are and how to follow them.
- Take extra care during the maintenance cycle. Before, during, and after the maintenance cycle, you need to do your due diligence and inspect everything during this process. You also need to take a look at your safety tools and equipment to make sure it is working properly.
- Install devices that can protect your chemical storage tanks. There are a number of pieces of equipment that can be purchased to protect your horizontal pressure vessels. This helps them keep up with the day-to-day usage of the tanks. There are also protective coverings that can prevent any problems.
- Inspections are your friends. These may seem like a pain but they really are crucial to keeping your jacketed vessels in good shape. You need to conduct your inspections in a very systematic way. The more inspections you do, the better. The idea here is to find any issues when they are small and easy to deal with. Small problems never go away on their own. When you are dealing with vertical or horizontal pressure vessels, you are not dealing with a static load but one that changes.
- If you find problems, replace what parts are failing. If you find that the valves, pumps, or any other part of your pressure vessels need to be replaced, this should be done as soon as you can. There are industries where the standard policy is to “replace when needed.” While this policy can save money in the short term, in the long term, it can be quite costly. It is a much better plan to replace these items sooner than later to keep everything and everyone more safe.
- Do not scrimp on safety equipment. It may seem like you can save your business money by buying safety equipment that costs a little less. There are a number of problems with this approach. Should you have a safety problem, you can end up losing a lot more money. In some cases, where the safety equipment is not up to the job and someone is hurt, you may have to shut down for a few days, or more. If that happens, you will lose a lot more revenue. To avoid this, you need to put in pressure gauges, the right signs, and alarms.
Putting in place a well thought out plan and policy for inspecting your tanks and equipment, making and keeping a schedule for maintenance will do a lot to improve your bottom line. These two steps alone can lower the risk to the people working with and around pressurized vessels. A safe workplace is more than good for your workers, it is also good for your business.