Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
(OP)
Does anyone have experience with forced cooling of high energy steam piping with nitrogen? My goal is to reduce schedule time and improve safety for asbestos abatement workers removing insulation from hot reheat piping by reducing pipe temps to ambient upon shutdown asap. The pipe will be demo'd and replaced with new. The other goal is to do so without detrimentally affecting the HRH outlet header or turbine connections. Is this a bad idea or worth pursuing??





RE: Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
Steve Jones
Materials & Corrosion Engineer
http://www.pdo.co.om/pdo/
RE: Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
Nitrogen gas is neither and is a potential danger.
TTFN
RE: Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
RE: Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
Don't put liquid nitrogen into the pipe. One, I am pretty sure your piping is carbon steel and not made for liquid nitrogen temperatures. The second is, that it is pretty easy to get a lot of moles of nitrogen into a closed system very fast, combining that with the brittle nature of cold carbon steel and you have the makings of a three finger Joe film.
What about just using compressed air or low pressure steam? I think if you do the math that the volume will be very large for air but you might get better results for superheating steam and as the pipe cools off feed compressed air.
RE: Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping
However, given the lack of suitable heat fins, the overall cooling efficiency will still be quite poor.
Unless your system was designed with this intent in mind, you're most likely going to waste a lot of money and resources for very little benefit.
TTFN
RE: Nitrogen Cooling of High Temperature Piping