Re-purposed LP tank sat dry for a year. Recently refilled and heated up to 150F. I now have rusty water. Do I drain out the water and re-fill or just treat the tank with anti corrosion?
Rusty Water in 1000 gallon LP Tank
- Thread starter JJSHELLEY
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Only if there is oxygen avalibale.I check the bottom drain on my tanks every year and the water is crystal clear after sitting for the summer,no rust sediments ever
It sat "dry" but full of air so it most likely developed a slight layer of internal surface corrosion / rust. Filling it and heating it to 150 would have caused some slight thermal expansion of the tank metal, causing it to shed off some of the surface rust into the water. Your best bet is probably to heat it up to your max temp, then drain, flush, rinse & refill. You may want to add a chemical cleaner before doing this.
http://www.woodboilersolutions.com/ has been mentioned around here in the past. They sell chemical cleaners, de-scalers and water treatment products.
Do you have any spare ports big enough to insert a cleaning nozzle into the tank? Something like a lawn impact sprinkler head to act as a rotary wash head to knock down any remaining loose stuff? Depending on tank measurements and port sizes on your tank, a rotating drain snake attachment for a pressure washer might remove any remaining loose material.
We have all 3 of these at my work (trash to energy power plant). They work good for unclogging drains, de-scaling pipes and hoses and flushing sludge like sediment out of the boiler water wall headers. We run them on a Yamaha 4 gpm 4000 psi gas power washer.
Amazon product ASIN B003X5PSV0
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We had a 125' long 2" diameter chemical hose that was clogged up with dry hardened lime scale. This hose normally has 1.15 specific gravity lime slurry flowing through it at 50 gpm and 180 psi. Someone took the line out of service but failed to back flush it out, so it hardened up. Attaching this 50' snake to another 100' power washer extension hose and to our gas power washer had the line cleared out within a few hours. The "pull" of the snake is sufficient that it was able to pull itself vertically up to a level of 70' through a 2" id hose that was about 125' long that had several sweeping bends and a few horizontal runs in it. I had reservations about buying it for this project but it surpassed my expectations . It was very cost effective as compared to replacing the expensive chemical hose + renting a 100' boom lift to re-string it up the side of our facility.
If you drain, clean, flush , refill and continue to have dirty water, I would install a quality high temp filter or magnetic dirt separator.
http://www.woodboilersolutions.com/ has been mentioned around here in the past. They sell chemical cleaners, de-scalers and water treatment products.
Do you have any spare ports big enough to insert a cleaning nozzle into the tank? Something like a lawn impact sprinkler head to act as a rotary wash head to knock down any remaining loose stuff? Depending on tank measurements and port sizes on your tank, a rotating drain snake attachment for a pressure washer might remove any remaining loose material.
We have all 3 of these at my work (trash to energy power plant). They work good for unclogging drains, de-scaling pipes and hoses and flushing sludge like sediment out of the boiler water wall headers. We run them on a Yamaha 4 gpm 4000 psi gas power washer.
Amazon product ASIN B003X5PSV0
Amazon product ASIN B07RPY26GZ
Amazon product ASIN B077STYDB9
We had a 125' long 2" diameter chemical hose that was clogged up with dry hardened lime scale. This hose normally has 1.15 specific gravity lime slurry flowing through it at 50 gpm and 180 psi. Someone took the line out of service but failed to back flush it out, so it hardened up. Attaching this 50' snake to another 100' power washer extension hose and to our gas power washer had the line cleared out within a few hours. The "pull" of the snake is sufficient that it was able to pull itself vertically up to a level of 70' through a 2" id hose that was about 125' long that had several sweeping bends and a few horizontal runs in it. I had reservations about buying it for this project but it surpassed my expectations . It was very cost effective as compared to replacing the expensive chemical hose + renting a 100' boom lift to re-string it up the side of our facility.
If you drain, clean, flush , refill and continue to have dirty water, I would install a quality high temp filter or magnetic dirt separator.
All great info and thanks for the resources and replies. I plan on installing a dirt magnet as well.
Thanks to all!!
Thanks to all!!
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