Today, let me tell you about the design of pressure vessels, why are these strange shapes made, and what are the reasons? Do you know under what circumstances the pressure vessel used should be spherical? Let's open the world of pressure vessels together today!
A pressure vessel is a closed device that holds gas or liquid and carries a certain pressure. It is usually composed of a cylinder, a head, a flange, a sealing element, a hole, a nozzle, a support, and various other internal parts. There are many methods. According to the geometric shape, there are mainly four kinds of cylindrical containers, spherical containers, rectangular containers and combined containers.
Shape classification is the most intuitive way to classify the types of pressure vessels, so today, Dr. Material Science will tell you about the differences and functions of pressure vessels of different shapes according to the shape.

1. Cylindrical pressure vessel

The basic structure of a cylindrical pressure vessel is a cylinder head, a nozzle, a manhole, and a support. Its main advantages are that it is easy to manufacture, and it is convenient to set process internals inside. The square container is large.
Cylindrical containers are used in petroleum, liquefaction, etc. Generally, small liquefied petroleum gas storage tanks are made into such cylindrical shapes, and large ones are made of different geometric containers.

2. Spherical container

A spherical container is also called a spherical tank, and the shell is spherical. It is an effective and economical pressure vessel for storing and transporting various gases, liquids and liquefied gases.
Compared with the cylindrical container, the main advantages are: uniform force; under the same wall thickness condition, the spherical tank has the highest bearing capacity, under the same volume condition, the spherical container has the smallest surface area, due to the wall thickness, small surface area and other reasons , which generally saves more steel than cylindrical containers. The main disadvantage is that the manufacturing and construction are more complicated. It is widely used in the fields of chemical industry, petroleum, oil refining, shipbuilding and city gas industry.

3. Rectangular container

Rectangular containers, also known as square containers, generally carry gases or liquids with low pressure. Now, the shape design of such containers is relatively small, because square containers are easily deformed and lead to accidents, and the cost of designing rectangular containers is higher than that of round containers. So now rectangular containers are relatively rare.

But the square container has the advantage that it has sufficient stability and firmness, suitable for storing or transporting very sensitive powder materials.

The above are several common shapes of pressure vessels. Pressure vessels are widely used, and they play an important role in industry, civil use, and military industries. It is most used in the chemical industry and petrochemical industry, such as this air compressor. All kinds of special compressors and auxiliary equipment of refrigeration compressors, such as coolers, buffers, oil-water separators, gas storage tanks, evaporators, liquid refrigerant storage tanks, etc., all belong to pressure vessels.
 
The final design of the pressure vessel is closely related to its calculation and application direction. If one is not careful, it will not only increase the manufacturing cost of the vessel, but also easily lead to accidents. Therefore, the relevant departments should also pay attention to a design of the pressure vessel.