steam sparge a kettle?

[petepsingpy]

Anyone ever have experience with something like this? We want to spray steam into a glass-lined tank through a 2" dip leg. The dipleg points straight towards the bottom head of the tank, which is about 2 ft under the dipleg. The pressure at the end of the dipleg where it enters the tank (submerged under liquid) would be about 150 mmHg, when you consider the head of liquid above the end of the pipe.

I estimated that at the target rate of steam flow of 300 lb/hr, the velocity in the end of the tube would be 600 ft/s. That sounds quite high to me, but I have no feel for the potential to damage the vessel. Nitrogen is routinely sparged the same way, but my best estimate is that the velocity is < 150 ft/s.

Any comments appreciated.
Thanks

 

[katmar]

I can't say for sure that you will damage the lining, but I would be very reluctant to try it with the set-up you describe.

What I can say with a much greater degree of certainty is that if the temperatures are such that the steam will condense then you are going to have a problem with noise and vibration. If possible make the dip leg longer - almost all the way to the bottom of the tank - and then blank off the end of the pipe and drill it full of 3mm (1/8&quot holes in the vertical section (presuming you can't get a horizontal section in).

With small steam bubbles the noise is dramatically less. Make sure the highest holes are well covered by the liquid in the tank.

regards
Harvey (Katmar)

 

[c2sco]

As Harvey says, you are certain to get a lot of noise and vibration. However commercial systems for this do exist, although the ones I've seen are much smaller than this. If the process is intense leading to excessive vibration, adding some nitrogen to the steam (only a few vol%) will improve it dramatically.