Koole Terminals
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
FOAMGLAS® Insulation keeps heated oil tanks warm at Koole Terminals, The Netherlands
Koole Terminals is a leading independent storage company in North-West Europe headquartered in Zaandam, Netherlands. Their port location in Rotterdam (Pernis) is the perfect base for clients from around the world. The terminal is in operation 24/7 and has a storage capacity of 625,000 m³. Additional storage capacity will be added in the coming years as a response to the growing demand for storage.
Koole Terminals started with the construction of new 30 meter high oil storage tanks with an individual capacity of 30,000 m³. Each storage tank will be installed on 1,100 m² of FOAMGLAS® insulation.
FOAMGLAS® High Load Bearing insulation offers superior insulating properties with a stable and a non-deteriorating insulation effiency which ensures a constant thermal performance that remains unchanged over time. This was an important requirement as energy control was the most important criterion for this project. The engineering departments did the economic calculations and calculated an average payback period of twelve to eighteen months.
The steel weight of 8 ton per m³ combined with the weight of the tank roof and its pressure that is transfered onto the tank wall, resulted in a significant pressure load. Once the tanks are filled, the total pressure at the bottom of the tank on the FOAMGLAS® insulation system will climb up to 30 ton/m² per tank. This is of course no problem for FOAMGLAS® HLB 1600 blocks as they can easily withstand five times this amount of pressure as specified in the product data sheet.
Each tank’s global structure consists of a concrete foundation on top of 250 piles with a raised concrete outer ring. The FOAMGLAS® insulation is directly installed on top of this concrete foundation and covered with a pressure distribution layer which will be in direct contact with the steel tank.
Functional and economical calculations were made to determine the necessary insulation thickness to reach maximum efficiency. A single layer system consisting of 100 mm FOAMGLAS® HLB 1600 insulation blocks was the system that would be installed.
FOAMGLAS® insulation’s HLB 1600 grade has a compressive strength of 1.6 MPa (232 lb/in²) which is five times more than the maximum pressure load. This safety factor on the compressive strength is always applied when working with FOAMGLAS® HLB insulation in tank base applications.
All blocks were glued with Pittsburgh Corning’s in-house PC® 500 one-component adhesive and were all fully adhered to the concrete substrate and afterwards covered with an oil-sand mix as levelling and pressure distribution layer.
