Lighter Material Shows Its Mettle

Order Reprints

Revisiting
Aluminum Domes
For API Storage
Tanks
by J. Randolph Kissell, The TGB
Partnership, Alan Geis, Colonial
Pipeline Company, Atlanta, GA.

Kissell

Geis

n the past, steel roofs on petroleum storage tanks have often

been a challenge to maintain.
Traditionally, more volatile stocks
such as gasoline were stored in
external floating roof tanks, while cone
roof tanks were usually built for less
volatile products such as diesel. In each
case, the results were mixed. External
floating roofs often sink when drains fail
to operate properly or snow accumulates
on the decks. Cone roofs frequently corrode more rapidly than the tanks they
cover, requiring replacement.
To address these problems, aluminum
domes were first used as fixed roofs for
petroleum storage tanks in the late 1970s.
These domes clear-span the tank with a
bolted, triangulated aluminum frame clad
with aluminum sheet and can be installed
without emptying the tanks, since they
are bolted together on site without weld ing. The cladding is 3003-H16 aluminum
sheet, usually 0.050-inch thick, and the
frames are 6061-T6 aluminum extrusions.
Beginning in 1977, when Conservatek
installed 14 domes ranging from 24 to 120
feet in diameter for Arco in the Northeast,
aluminum domes rapidly captured the
market for retrofitted fixed roofs.
Aluminum domes became so popular that
the American Petroleum Institute added
them in 1992 to API Standard 650, Welded
Steel Tanks for Oil Storage, as Appendix

Permission to Copy

Photo 1: Tank 830 at Colonial Pipeline

Companys Greensboro, NC facility.

G. The aluminum roofs were expected to

resist corrosion without coatings and
remain leak-tight with little maintenance.
In 2002, 25 years after the first alu minum domes were built on API tanks,
the TGB Partnership surveyed two early
installations to determine whether the
anticipated benefits have been realized
and which dome features among various
alternatives have proven to be the best.

Photo 2: 200-foot diameter MTBE storage

tank at Texas Petrochemicals Pasadena,
TX facility.

Colonial Pipelines
Pioneering Effort
Colonials pipeline system extends from
Houston across the Gulf States, up the eastern seaboard, and terminates near the New
York harbor area. More than 2 million bar rels a day of petroleum products such as
gasoline and fuel oil move through the
pipeline. In 1989 Arnold Barrett, then Chief
Mechanical
Engineer
for
Colonial,
explained Colonials situation as follows:
Tankage is the key to efficient and successful operational scheduling at Colonial
...Breakout tanks are used for operational
transfer of products between pipeline seg ments operating at different rates and on
different scheduling sequences. As a result,
these tanks are operated almost constantly.
It is not unusual for some breakout tanks to
be filled and emptied two or more times
during a 5-day product cycle.
The original Colonial system was con structed in 1963; operations began in
1964. During the early 1970s, when
Colonials external floating roofs began
showing serious deterioration from operational wear, an intensive repair program
was established. An effort was made to
prolong the useful roof life.
By the late 1970s, it became apparent
that an orderly replacement program
would be needed to prevent crisis
replacements under duress and to prevent
the emergency construction problems and
operational disruption caused by unexpected roof failures. By 1978, the program

Pipeline & Gas Journal / June 2003 / www.pipelineandgasjournal.com

Photo 3: Close-up of batten bars used to

clamp the dome cladding to the dome frame.
had been devised and set in place.
Colonial evaluated several roof-replace ment options. Costs and relative advantages
of various options were compared. [An aluminum] geodesic dome roof with [an aluminum] internal floating deck was adopted
as the companys standard roof design for
future roof replacements, as well as for
original equipment for new tanks.
Colonial had been one of the first com panies to use aluminum dome roofs, purchasing seven aluminum roofs in 1979 for
new tanks at their Pelham, AL facility.
Then, as Barrett described, Colonial
embarked on a pioneering effort to
replace external floating roofs with alu minum domes and aluminum internal
floating roofs. As part of this effort,
Colonial replaced all external floating
roofs at their Greensboro, NC facility in
the 1980s with aluminum dome roofs.

The 2002 Inspection

In November 2002, TGB inspected the
domes built by Conservatek at Colonials
Greensboro facility. The oldest had been
installed on Tank 830, 140 feet in diame ter by 51 feet high, which had originally
been built in 1963 by Chicago Bridge &
Iron with an external floating roof. In less
than 20 years, the roof needed replace -

Lighter Material Shows Its Mettle

ment, and in 1983, Colonial awarded the
work to Conservatek.
Today, the aluminum dome roof (Photo
1), has outlived its predecessor and shows
few signs of age. The weather seals and
caulk remain resilient and pliable, and the
aluminum components and stainless steel
fasteners show no signs of corrosion. While
the tank shell required repainting in 1989,
the aluminum dome has received no coatings and little maintenance of any kind.
Other dome roofs constructed by
Conservatek at Colonials Greensboro facility were in the same condition. Each steel
tank the domes covered had required
repainting since the domes were erected,
while the domes remain as installed with
nothing more than a mill finish.
The dome on Tank 830 was attached to
the steel tank in a manner that prevented
the dome from moving relative to the top
of the tank. This is referred to as a fixed
support. For this type of support, the top of
the steel tank resists the tension induced by
gravity loads such as dead load or snow on
the dome and compression caused by wind
uplift on the roof. Colonial was the first
company to use fixed supports, pioneering
this concept at their Pelham facility. The
other domes at Greensboro were attached
to the steel tank so as to allow the dome to
move radially inward or outward relative to
the center of the tank. This type of support
is called sliding.
For sliding supports, the base ring of the
aluminum dome resists the tension induced
by gravity loads on the dome and compression induced by wind uplift. API Standard
650 allows both support types, but since
aluminum is more expensive than steel,
domes with fixed supports are usually
more cost-efficient than domes with sliding
supports, especially for dome profiles commonly used on API tanks and on large
tanks. On the other hand, retrofitting the
top of the steel tank to resist the domes
radial reactions may necessitate welding,
requiring that the tank be out of service.
When loads such as snow or wind act on
the domes, the domes deflect. Although this
deflection is imperceptible from a distance, it
is on the order of several inches in domes of
the size at Greensboro. Fixed-support domes
deflect significantly less than sliding-support
domes because the steel ring at the base of
the dome is considerably stiffer than an aluminum ring. (Steels modulus of elasticity is
nearly three times that of aluminum, while its
design strength is about the same as that of
the aluminum alloy used in the domes). After
years of service, however, there was no perceptible difference in the condition or performance of the sliding-support domes compared to the fixed-support dome.
In constructing the domes at
Greensboro, Conservatek used a stainless
steel pin so the dome supports could
rotate relative to the top of the tank. This
minimizes bending of the tank top from
the dome, prolonging the life of the tank.
A primary concern with any roof is

weather tightness. The day after the fourth

wettest October on record, with 9 inches
of rain over the previous four weeks, no
water was visible on the floating roofs
beneath the domes.
Since the Greensboro terminal is relatively
close to an international airport and interstate
highway, there were initial concerns about
possible glare from the aluminum domes.
Additionally, the durability of mill finish aluminum in tank service had not yet been
demonstrated. While one dome at the site
was painted, all of the others were furnished
without any coatings. The mill finish domes
have weathered to a uniform light gray, and
glare and durability are of no concern today.
In summary, the inspection of
Colonials Greensboro facility indicated
that aluminum domes had performed well
for rigorous service on gasoline tanks. But
how had they performed for other types
of petrochemical service?

A Large Dome
In 1985, Conservatek erected the largest
aluminum dome ever built for petroleum
service up to that time. The roof covered
an existing 200 foot diameter methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) external floating
roof storage tank at Texas Petrochemicals
in Pasadena, TX, (Photo 2). MTBE storage
is particularly sensitive to contamination
by water since the product is water soluble. Water can result in the product not
meeting specifications, so the product is
sampled every day.
Texas Petrochemicals had not experienced problems with external floating
roof deterioration, however, the seals
between the external floating roof and the
tank shell allowed too much water to
enter the tank. The purpose of the aluminum dome roof was to eliminate water
contamination of the product.
Just off the Houston Ship Channel in a
heavily industrial area, the site is exposed
to the heat and humidity of the long Texas
summers and Gulf Coast hurricanes, a real
concern for an installation that soars nearly 80 feet above grade. During TGBs
November 2002 inspection, the owner
said that it has never performed any maintenance on the dome nor found any evidence of roof leakage.
In fact, when Texas Petrochemicals
expanded their MTBE storage capacity in
1995 by adding two 75-foot diameter, 48foot tall tanks, they used aluminum dome
roofs for those as well. All of the tanks
have been in continuous service since the
roofs were installed. The dome seals and
caulk were flexible, and there was no evidence of corrosion of the aluminum components or stainless steel fasteners.
The domes aluminum cladding is held
in place by batten bars, (Photo 3), a custom
aluminum extrusion with grooves to retain
a weather seal gasket on either side of the
centerline of the batten. API Standard 650
G.2.5.2 requires that gaskets comply with

Pipeline & Gas Journal / June 2003 / www.pipelineandgasjournal.com

either ASTM C509, Standard Specification

for Elastomeric Cellular Preformed Gasket
and Sealing Material, or Federal
Specification ZZ-R-765, Rubber, Silicone.
On the Colonial domes, silicone manufactured to ZZ-R-765 was used for the seals.
All the Texas Petrochemicals dome roofs
have neoprene weather seal manufactured
to ASTM C509. Both the neoprene seals at
the Pasadena site and the silicone seals in
Greensboro were pliable and resilient in
the 2002 inspection, and there was no perceptible difference in the condition or performance of the different seal materials.
There is a great variety of performance
among elastomers depending on the specifications to which they are produced, and
the gaskets used on aluminum domes are
no exception. Some flange gaskets of
unspecified material on nozzles in the
Colonial roofs, for example, showed deterioration where exposed to the elements.
Both ZZ-R-765 and ASTM C509 require that
elastomers meet high and low temperature
test requirements, however, and so provide
some assurance of outdoor suitability, if not
compatibility with product in the tank.
While silicone has suffered some failures
as a dome seal in petroleum service, it has
been adequate for freely-vented applications
of the type used on the tanks in this survey.
Neoprene is less costly than silicone and
more resistant to petroleum products. This
suggests that ASTM C509 neoprene seals are
the better choice for petroleum service,
offering better performance at lower cost.
The 200-foot diameter dome at
Pasadena was built with fixed supports,
similar to Colonials Tank 830 previously
described, while the 75-foot diameter
domes were built with sliding supports.
The tension induced by gravity loads at
the base of the 200-foot diameter tank
was large enough to require installation of
a steel stiffening ring on the tank top
when the dome was built. As at
Greensboro, though, there was no measurable difference in durability or leak
tightness of the fixed-support dome compared to the sliding-support domes.

Conclusions
Fixed-support and sliding-support
domes performed equally well at the sites
surveyed for this article. This suggests,
then, that the choice of support can be
based on costs and conditions for the spe cific case at hand, without concerns
regarding performance. For the freely
vented storage tanks at Greensboro and
Pasadena, silicone and neoprene weather
seals have proven equally durable.
A quarter century after their introduction, aluminum domes have now realized the benefits anticipated when they
were first conceived, and proved to be
the most durable fixed roofs for petroleum tanks. Thousands of domes have
been built and every major oil company
has used them. At the various sites and
for the types of service recently inspect-

ed, the domes have required no coatings to last indefinitely in continuous

petroleum storage service.
Authors: Randy Kissell co-founded
the TGB Partnership, an engineering firm
specializing in aluminum structures, in
1993 and has been involved in the design,
fabrication, and erection of aluminum
structures since 1978. He co-authored
Aluminum Structures - A Guide to Their
Specifications and Design, published by
John Wiley and now in its 2nd edition,

and co-holds two patents, including one

for an aluminum bridge deck. He is secretary of the Engineering Advisory
Committee of the Aluminum Association,
responsible for the Specification for
Aluminum Structures, used throughout
the U.S. for aluminum structural design.
He is also chairman of the ASME B96
Committee for Welded Aluminum Alloy
Storage Tanks, secretary of the American
Welding Societys Subcommittee on
Aluminum Structures, and a member of

the ASTM Light Metal Alloys committee

and the American Society of Civil
Engineers Load Standards Committee.
Alan Geis is a Tank Coordinator for
Colonial Pipelines system integrity program and has worked for Colonial for 16
years in various tank related assignments.
Geis holds a BS (1985) in business management from Oklahoma State University
and is a member of the API subcommittee
on pressure vessels and tanks, subgroup
design. P&GJ

Pipeline & Gas Journal / June 2003 / www.pipelineandgasjournal.com