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As someone who designs these sorts of things for a living, there are a host of problems with having diesel fuel on the room. For one thing, fire codes limit the
by imgabe 14y ago
As someone who designs these sorts of things for a living, there are a host of problems with having diesel fuel on the room. For one thing, fire codes limit the amount of diesel fuel you can store on the roof (for obvious reasons). For another thing, the trucks that carry in the diesel fuel to refill the tanks are located on the street. One way or another you're going to have to pump fuel from the street up to the roof, which is going to leave the pumps that do so susceptible to flooding.
- jbert 14y agoWould a closed, pressurised air system work as a one-off "push all diesel from this tank to the roof" system? So you could store: - tank full of diesel - some compressed air cylinders at a low level, and use them in the "everything is submerged" event.
- imgabe 14y agoMy expertise is on the electrical side, rather than the plumbing side, but I suspect the amount of compressed air you would need to propel 500 gallons or so of diesel up 17 stories would be impractical.
- jordanb 14y agoOne can buy pneumatic submersible pumps. I could see having a compressor on the upper levels of the building drive the pump in the basement. http://www.atlascopco.us/usus/products/navigationbyproduct/productgroup.aspx?id=1602137 http://www.atlascopco.us/usus/products/navigationbyproduct/p... Of course, if the diesel has water in it it's no good anyway. And the submersible pumps are mainly sludge or slurry pumps and (I suspect) not rated to handle fuel.
- danshapiro 14y ago500 gal diesel = 1622 kg 17 stories = 46 meters Energy required = 1621 * 46 * g = 732 kJ Integrating PV=nRT, W = -nRT*ln(V₂/V₁) assume you're going to compress the air to 150 psi, or 10 atm, so V₂/V₁ = 10. Assume T=10 degrees C. Solving for n, you need 880 moles of air. Putting this back through PV=nRT, we get a modest 190 gallons of air (compressed). So you need a 200 gallon tank with 150 psi storage. Look, here's one on craigslist for $400. http://eugene.craigslist.org/gms/3306858286.html http://eugene.craigslist.org/gms/3306858286.html
- abduhl 14y agoGiven a 200 gallon tank with 150 psi pressure you would no longer be able to pump the diesel to the roof after 460 gallons of the diesel is pumped, assuming temperature is constant and line friction losses are negligible. Also, I think you have made an error in your arithmetic.