Our references in tank building

SOYK Indus­tri­al Ser­vices GmbH was com­mis­sio­ned to repair a dry gas tank (mem­bra­ne gas tank) as part of this pro­ject. The tank has a dia­me­ter of 25 m, a shell height of 23 m, and a tank capa­ci­ty of 9,400 m³. In this case, the mem­bra­ne is atta­ched to a floa­ting hori­zon­tal disc. During ope­ra­ti­on, the mem­bra­ne is stret­ched into an arc shape by the gas pres­su­re bet­ween the attach­ment to the disc (pis­ton) and the tank housing. Befo­re car­ry­ing out the repair work, SOYK GmbH recor­ded the actu­al con­di­ti­on of the mem­bra­ne gas tank.

The resi­dues left in the tank after various rin­sing pro­ces­ses (sludge) are sucked out by the clea­ning robot from SOYK GmbH using our asso­cia­ted suc­tion truck and our ATEX screw pump (rough clea­ning).

Spe­ci­fi­cal­ly, the fol­lo­wing work steps were car­ri­ed out by SOYK GmbH as the gene­ral contractor:

• First, the mem­bra­ne was patched in seve­ral places so that a test run could be car­ri­ed out. The test run was per­for­med with air using mobi­le blo­wers that were instal­led out­side the gaso­me­ter for this purpose.
• It was deter­mi­ned that the instal­led dia­phragm was too long, the dia­phragm disc was twis­ted or not posi­tio­ned cor­rect­ly in the tank, and the­r­e­fo­re the dia­phragm cable gui­de also had to be realigned.
• This was fol­lo­wed by a com­ple­te sur­vey of the gaso­me­ter with the aim of deter­mi­ning its actu­al con­di­ti­on as accu­ra­te­ly as pos­si­ble in order to deri­ve the appro­pria­te mea­su­res to ensu­re the smooth ope­ra­ti­on of the gaso­me­ter in the future. In addi­ti­on, the requi­red dimen­si­ons of the new mem­bra­ne were deter­mi­ned on the basis of the cur­rent sur­vey results.
• In a fur­ther step, based on the preli­mi­na­ry inves­ti­ga­ti­ons, the disc of the dry gas con­tai­ner was floa­ted using the mobi­le blo­wers and rea­li­gned or repo­si­tio­ned cen­tral­ly in the con­tai­ner in accordance with the mea­su­re­ments taken previously.
• The old mem­bra­ne was then dis­mant­led, start­ing with the fas­tening to the disc and then to the tank jacket or to a cir­cu­la­ti­on pipe in this con­tai­ner. The fas­tening rails and the mem­bra­ne were then dis­po­sed of properly.
• Based on a struc­tu­ral ana­ly­sis com­mis­sio­ned by us to assess the sta­bi­li­ty of the dry gas tank, lon­gi­tu­di­nal stif­fe­ners were atta­ched to the tank shell due to axi­al buck­ling. For this pur­po­se, an inter­nal scaf­fold was instal­led along the tank wall, from which the grin­ding and wel­ding work on the tank shell was car­ri­ed out.
• The rope gui­des of the dry gas tank were repla­ced and their posi­ti­ons abo­ve and below the disc and on the tank jacket were moved, as the disc of the gaso­me­ter had also been rea­li­gned and repo­si­tio­ned cen­tral­ly in the tank. The requi­red new posi­ti­ons of the deflec­tion rollers/rope gui­des were pre­cis­e­ly mea­su­red in advan­ce. Based on the mea­su­re­ment results, the­se were dis­mant­led and then wel­ded back into their new posi­ti­ons to ensu­re smooth ope­ra­ti­on of the gaso­me­ter in the future.
• In the next step, an instal­la­ti­on ope­ning was cut into the tank jacket, through which the 11-ton trans­port box con­tai­ning the new mem­bra­ne was inser­ted via a rail sys­tem, unfold­ed, and then reinstalled.
• The gaso­me­ter pis­ton was pre­vious­ly cover­ed with a scaf­fol­ding plat­form to crea­te a flat sur­face that would allow the mem­bra­ne to unfold safe­ly. Due to the hea­vy weight of the ramp and scaf­fol­ding plat­form men­tio­ned abo­ve, addi­tio­nal woo­den sup­ports were instal­led below the pis­ton to secu­re it.
• Once the­se com­plex pre­pa­ra­ti­ons had been com­ple­ted, the nitri­le mem­bra­ne was unfold­ed in the tank and pul­led upwards using cable pulls—which were moun­ted on a total of 14 roof con­nec­tions on the tank roof—before being screwed tight­ly into place on the upper moun­ting ring. The mem­bra­ne was then moun­ted on the gaso­me­ter piston.
• Final­ly, the mem­bra­ne was com­ple­te­ly assem­bled and then sub­jec­ted to a leak test in the cour­se of various test runs using air in the pre­sence of a test­ing orga­niza­ti­on. Result: The tight­ness of the mem­bra­ne was veri­fied and docu­men­ted to the operator.
• Then the moment final­ly arri­ved: after almost a year of exten­si­ve repairs, the offi­ci­al test run of the gaso­me­ter was suc­cessful­ly com­ple­ted on Febru­ary 20, 2025, in the pre­sence of the operator.
• We are proud to have com­ple­ted this com­plex pro­ject well ahead of sche­du­le and would like to thank all our part­ner com­pa­nies for their sup­port and the ope­ra­tor for their trust in our work.