Abstract:
This study is aimed to cover and highlight the causes of failure of the sliding
ladder and the rollers of the floating roof tank No.703 at Royan station of Sudanese
Petroleum Pipe Line Company (SPPC), and to suggest remedy measurements. The
sliding ladder was completely damaged for unknown reasons, this occurred while
the floating roof was moving up.
The plates that hold the seal between the roof of the tank and the shell courses
to avoid losses due to vapor or leakages were harmed too , finally the railway
guide of the rollers was found to be bent.
The same failure occurred on tank No.704 which indicate that a real problem
exists which needed to be investigated. This was the first time for such problem to
occur in the above mentioned company in spite of having floating roof tanks
erected since 1977 and they are functioning properly.
The damaged parts of the floating roofs were constructed locally by Sudanese
company while foreign contractors erected others. Similar design to this damaged
tank in railway guides, differs in the roller size are used to store the same product
was erected by Romanians is functioning properly. An analysis to the ladder and
the rollers were carried out to investigate the possible causes of that failure.
The cause of failure was attributed to the material of the roller and it is
suggested to replace the aluminum rollers by steel fabricated rollers and to use the
same ladder with the same operational conditions at Elroyan station with some
precautions for the roof level in operation.
