Petrochemical facility in São Paulo, Brazil.
40 km of steam piping ran through a flood-prone service trench. Mineral wool and cal-sil were waterlogged year-round, and CUI was advancing fast. Pyrogel® XTE kept the system dry and recovered $1.3M per year.
Tropical rain, a flooded service trench, and 715 °F steam.
The piping ran through a service trench that flooded routinely, with UV-degraded jacketing letting moisture into already-failing fibrous insulation.
- Flooded service trench. Geography made periodic flooding inevitable; jacketing failed under UV and rain.
- Degraded mineral wool and cal-sil. Wet, falling off, and locally absent — accelerating CUI.
- Steam quality collapsed during rain. Downstream units forced into shutdown when the trench flooded.
- CUI on high-pressure steam line. A catastrophic risk on a 715 °F service.
Pyrogel® XTE kept the steam line dry and stable.
Pyrogel® XTE’s hydrophobicity removed the moisture path; process stability returned and the rental-boiler workaround was no longer needed.
- Kept steam line dry and operating efficiently. Hydrophobic blanket survives the trench environment.
- Process stability through wet weather. Downstream units no longer forced offline during rain events.
- Rental boilers eliminated. Capacity workaround was no longer required to maintain steam supply.
- Payback under 8 months. ROI on the material investment was rapid.
$1.3M per year in energy and stability savings.
Pyrogel® XTE’s combination of dry-in-service performance and CUI resistance delivered $1.3M per year on this site’s steam network — and removed the operational cost and reliability risk of running rental boilers as a weather workaround.
Insulation under water? Process down when it rains?
Aspen’s hydrophobic blankets are engineered for trench and tropical service.