Study of bitumen cooling process in an above-ground tank in order to develop technologically and energetically efficient methods of maintaining its temperature

The article is devoted to the study of the process of bitumen BND-60/90 cooling in an elevated vertical steel tank. Attention to this issue is dictated by the fact, that the specific properties of the product increasing viscosity and tendency to solidification during cooling — create difficulties in its operational turnover for the operators, and storage at high temperature leads to deterioration of the commodity properties. The relevance of the study comes from the need to find an energy-efficient solution for enterprises which accept, store and promptly dispense bitumen on an industrial scale. The work was conducted in order to explore the possibility of reducing energy consumption, while heating the product, by optimizing the design of the heater. The object of the research was an insulated tank RVS-3000 with a fixed roof, the prototype of the same volume of which was built by Himstalcon-Engineering LLC in Kaluga. It is assumed, that this tank was filled with bitumen heated to a temperature of 160⁰С. In this work the distribution of the temperature field, as well as the field of velocity of bitumen movement over the volume of the tank, were obtained. This allowed us to formulate preliminary conclusions about promising directions for the development of technologically and energetically efficient methods of maintaining its temperature.