Hi Roland,

It sounds like you might be exporting sulphur prills from an oil terminal according to the climate, residence time and fire protection. So why 200m altitude?

Sulphur will melt quite easily,but still needs care. Sometimes the pipelines can solidify from wave over-topping, en route, when they are not jacketed. Then the operators go down the line and steam the pipe until it flows again. In your case maybe the fire precautions were disabled while they put a burner onto the hopper shell because at 200m they were away from hydrocarbon pipelines. If somebody is watching they would just use the hammer.

I would say to:

1. Yes, it has crusted before and will do so again;

2. Rubber is there to reduce degradation, that's all: sulphur and rubber are not the best of friends;

3. Put a jacketed ring around the outlet to get the prills moving and feed the jacket from a steam cleaner when they need it. Don't forget to trim the rubber back from the outlet.

Hope this helps a bit,,,,,and there's no call for a drawing either: this time.

You mention SO₂. If your application is for fuel to a sulphuric acid plant, or something of that sort, my solution is still the same. ■

If you trawl through the threads there was case of someone cleaning a blocked sulphur silo using steam cleaners. As I recall there was no fire hazard involved, they were only using steam and hot condensate. If you don't fancy the jacketing; you have a poke hole already: just add more'. In Al Jubail I often saw ship loads of the stuff exported from the adjacent berth. It flowed like a dream.

Believe it or not, when a road tanker full of bitumen gets the discharge pipe blocked the driver is expected to procure a blowtorch and get down and heat the pipe to 160^oC to get the stuff moving. Many do: I wouldn't. ■

Originally Posted by Roland Heilmann

Hello Lyn, Hello All,

i would very much like to give these above requests a second try in this here forum.

Please have a(nother) kind look...

Thank you in advance for your time and interest

R.

Hi Roland and all,

Perhaps you should consider an alternative reclaim system such as Vibrafloor, if you are struggling with bridging and blocking of prilled sulphur. It requires no routine maintenance, achieves total silo clearance, without degrading the product and does not require any silo reinforcement as no torque or damaging vibration is transferred to the silo. If you would like me to send some video links and more information, please feel free to contact me on simon@carbon-2-zero.co.uk or +44(0)7711 001819

Regards

Simon ■