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    TURNING UREA TANKERS INTO CONSTANT STIR TANKS.
    WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT!

    One of our favorite things at HBW is when opportunities come that both challenge us and allow us to use creativity in design. Turning a set of tanker trucks into constant stir tanks for dissolution of Urea gave us both of these!

    Our client had an ergonomic issue when it came to offloading 50,000 pounds of urea prills from dry bulk tankers twice a day. If you know anything about urea, it is hygroscopic; it loves to grab moisture out of the air. In the summer months, while tankers sit in the warm moist air, you can imagine what happens to the small little prills. Yep, they form bricks. Now think about the effect those bricks have when trying to utilize a vacuum system for urea removal? It tends not to like it. Our client was literally having to sledge hammer the sides of the truck to get 90% of the urea transferred from each tank.

    An alternative concept that customized a tanker into a constant stir tank was developed. This used spray devices internal to the tanker for both water introduction and mixing zone agitation.

    This was a relatively new concept for the project team and it was initially met with some skepticism. Our team designed a series of experiments using a stainless steel drum to mock a section of the tanker. This allowed us to develop the process methodology and give peace of mind to the team that our design would work. Coming out of the experimentation, we had a process design that fully dissolved the urea within a 3 hour window and only required manual setup of three hoses.

    TURNING UREA TANKERS INTO CONSTANT STIR TANKS.<br> WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT!

    After proving out the design, we performed all engineering calculations and built out the detail design:

    Mass Balances

    • Water Requirements
    • Dissolution Rate
    • Solution Discharge Concentration

    Energy Balances

    • Heat Supplied by Purified Water at 40C
    • Heat Loss Through Tanker Shell
    • Heat Exchange Required for Maintaining
    • Temperature
    • Chilled Glycol and Steam Requirements

    Agitation Study

    • Orifice Pressure and Flow Rate for Spray Devices
    • Power per Unit Volume of the Mixing Zone

    Tanker Design

    • Prepared bid package and worked with tanker vendor for special design that included spray devices and sumps.

    Complete Hydraulic Analysis using AFT Fathom

    Once implemented, the operation worked like a charm. One of our favorite moments, a year into successful operation, an operator shook our chief engineer’s hand, saying “God Bless You!”. That put a smile on our faces!

    TURNING UREA TANKERS INTO CONSTANT STIR TANKS.<br> WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT!