Industrial inerting is a fundamental safety procedure applied to tanks, pipelines, and process equipment that operate with flammable or reactive substances. The objective of inerting is to replace a potentially explosive atmosphere with an inert atmosphere, reducing the oxygen concentration and eliminating the conditions necessary for fires or explosions to occur.
TSL specializes in industrial inerting services and offers complete solutions for pipeline inerting, tank inerting, process vessels, and industrial systems. With over 40 years of experience in industrial and environmental services, the company uses advanced technologies and highly qualified teams to ensure operational safety during maintenance, inspection, and shutdown interventions at industrial plants.
Inerting services are widely used in industries such as oil and gas, petrochemical, chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and in offshore and onshore operations. In these applications, inerting is essential before opening equipment or performing maintenance activities, ensuring the elimination of flammable vapors and protecting workers, equipment, and the environment.
TSL develops customized inerting projects, evaluating each industrial process to define the most efficient and safe methodology, whether through inerting with saturated water vapor or inerting with nitrogen, in accordance with international safety standards.
This process involves injecting saturated steam to eliminate hydrocarbon vapors from inside process vessels and piping. This operation is necessary every time the equipment or piping is opened for inspection or maintenance. In addition to inerting, steam injection also cleans the inside of the equipment, removing oil residue adhered to its internal walls.
The equipment typically used consists of fire-tube boilers, with steam flow rates of 650 to 10,000 kg/h and pressures up to 300 psi.
Areas of Application:
Steam inerting is a widely used method in the oil and gas industry for removing hydrocarbon vapors from tanks, pipelines, and process vessels. In this process, saturated water vapor is injected into the equipment to displace flammable gases and eliminate residual vapors that may pose a combustion risk.
In addition to inerting the internal atmosphere of the equipment, steam also cleans internal surfaces, removing oil and hydrocarbon residues adhered to the system walls. This combined effect makes steam inerting an extremely efficient solution for industrial maintenance operations.
This type of inerting is widely used in oil drilling and production platforms, FPSOs, oil storage terminals, refineries, and onshore production facilities. In these applications, steam acts both as an inerting agent and as an industrial cleaning agent.
To perform these services, TSL uses mobile industrial fire-tube boilers capable of generating steam at flow rates ranging from 650 kg/h to 10,000 kg/h, with pressures that can reach up to 300 psi. This capacity allows it to handle everything from one-off interventions to large industrial projects in offshore units and large-scale process plants.
Nitrogen inerting is a modern and highly safe solution for controlling flammable atmospheres in industrial equipment. In this method, gaseous nitrogen is injected into tanks, pipes, or reactors to reduce the oxygen concentration to levels below the limit required for combustion to occur.
This limit is known as Oxygen Concentration Limit (LOC) In most industrial applications, the goal is to reduce oxygen to values below approximately 8%. Reaching this level makes the formation of an explosive atmosphere impossible.
Nitrogen inerting is widely used in processes that require greater atmospheric control, such as in the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and food industries. Unlike steam, nitrogen does not add moisture to the system, making it ideal for processes sensitive to the presence of water or contamination.
The nitrogen inerting systems used by TSL follow the guidelines of NFPA 69 (Standard on Explosion Prevention Systems), an international standard that establishes safety criteria for explosion prevention systems using inerting.
TSL operates mobile nitrogen supply units capable of meeting different flow and pressure demands, ensuring precise control of oxygen concentration and continuous monitoring of the atmosphere throughout the operation.
TSL has extensive experience in performing industrial inerting services in complex environments, including offshore operations, petrochemical plants, storage terminals, and industrial production units.
The company stands out for offering complete solutions that integrate engineering, equipment, and operation, ensuring that each project is executed with maximum safety and efficiency. The combination of steam inerting and nitrogen inerting technologies allows TSL to offer suitable technical solutions for different types of processes and operational requirements.
In addition to its technical expertise, the company operates in compliance with national and international safety standards, including industrial regulations and globally recognized standards for fire and explosion prevention.
With a highly qualified team, modern equipment, and decades of experience in industrial services, TSL is a benchmark in the industrial inerting market, offering reliable solutions to protect operations, people, and industrial assets.
Piping and pipelines that have carried hydrocarbons retain flammable vapors even after being drained. Before any hot work, line opening, internal cleaning or decommissioning, the line is inerted: inert gas or saturated steam displaces the oxygen and vapors until the atmosphere is below the safe limit.
Pipe inerting is applied before startups and shutdowns, before pipeline cleaning with pigs or water jetting, and when decommissioning lines. The result is verified by measuring the atmosphere along the line.
In displacement purging, the inert gas pushes the existing atmosphere out of the line, like a piston. It is efficient in long lines with constant diameter. In dilution purging, the inert gas is injected and mixed with the internal atmosphere in cycles until the oxygen concentration drops to the required value. It is used in equipment with complex geometry, where displacement does not reach every point.
The most widely used gas is nitrogen: it is inert, does not react with hydrocarbons and can be supplied in large volumes. It displaces oxygen and flammable vapors until the concentration is below the safe limit defined for the product. In equipment that also requires removal of oily residues, TSL uses saturated steam, which inerts and at the same time carries away the hydrocarbons adhered to the walls. The method and the oxygen limit are defined in the inerting design, in accordance with NFPA 69.
