Typical equipment breakdown policies describe covered equipment as electrical or mechanical equipment that utilizes or generates energy. Examples of that type of equipment are pretty easy to follow; however, most policies go on to include covered equipment as “equipment built to operate under internal pressure or vacuum other than weight of contents.” Here I'm at a loss for an example. Can you describe the types of equipment that would be referring to and what types of things could happen to them to trigger coverage under the equipment breakdown policy?

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While we are not engineers, we can give a general idea on how vacuum and pressure vessels are used in manufacturing and storage operations. Pressure and/or vacuum components often are included within various types of furnaces and complex manufacturing equipment.

The first possible definition of breakdown is “failure of pressure or vacuum equipment,” but leakage at valves, fittings, and seals is excluded. It is difficult to provide ironclad examples of events that could trigger coverage because that depends upon the facts of the situation. Wear and tear (simply that the equipment wore out) frequently affects coverage under all equipment breakdown policies, and there has to actually be an event that can be shown to trigger the “breakdown”. The following are just some examples without going into all the areas that might compromise the coverage.

Pressure vessels: Pressure vessels are boilers and storage tanks that contain liquids or gases and are designed to operate at pressures above 15 psi. High pressure vessels function under greater than normal amounts of pressure without compromising seals or bursting. Stainless steel pressure vessels are used as storage, mixing, jacketed, and reactor tanks in food and beverage processing, pharmaceutical production, and other sanitary applications. Some pressure vessels control the temperature of their contents and are monitored by a series of gauges on the outside of the tank. Others are designed to store volatile substances at high temperatures, according to http://www.globalspec.com.

Examples would be water treatment tanks or dairy tanks. Failure could involve seams bursting or cracking although cracking or bulging at valves and seals is excluded, as previously noted. Another coverage trigger might be the failure of monitoring valves that allow the pressure to rise or fall beyond normal parameters, causing the vessel or tank to fail.

Hydraulic systems also use pressurized hydraulic fluid to move items. For example, some elevators use hydraulic cylinders to lift and lower the elevator cars. “Failure of the hydraulics” often is vocalized as the cause of damage but, again, simple wear and tear would be excluded.

Vacuum vessels: Vacuum vessels are similar but operate under vacuum instead of pressure. According to GlobalSpec, vacuum chambers and components are specialized vessels that can maintain a high vacuum process environment for manufacturing thin films, microelectronics, optics and materials. Vacuum chambers usually consist of a series of components such as a bell jar, baseplate, feedthrough collar, and service well that together provide a complete chamber.  Complex vacuum chambers are often designed and fabricated on a custom basis to meet an end-user's application requirements. Gloveboxes, welding chambers, degassing boxes, or surface analysis chambers are vacuum chambers pre-engineered for specific applications.  Degassing chambers and gloveboxes typically operate in the rough to low vacuum range for welding, degassing plastics or composite laminates or encapsulating components.

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