On the application of non-uniform water cooling for the fire safety of fuel storage tank farms

Compromising between application rate and spacing between tanks is one of the vague points regarding fire mitigation in hydrocarbon storage tanks. Codes and standards recommendations are not comprehensive and sometimes contradicting. The traditional, uniform, coolant application technique requires high storage capacities and over-consumes the coolant. This study investigates a non-traditional technique using non-uniform coolant distribution and illustrates the effect of this technique on coolant and land savings. A model is created to simulate fire propagation and mitigation through cooling water application under steady state conditions for surface pool fires in cylindrical hydrocarbon storage tanks. The model considers the types of fuel, the wind speed and direction, the smoke effect and the nozzles distribution, and the number of segments on the target tank surface. The model is applied on a real-life case study. The suggested technique achieved up to 30% reduction in cooling water consumption or 5.6% reduction in land area.