Safe and efficient fuel handling at tank terminals

Economical, safe, and efficient trading on the basis of harmonised and verified product specifications of fuels is of vital importance for tank terminals. Anton Paar’s digital measurement technology is ideally-suited to meet these requirements.

Safety during the delivery of new fuels and the shipping of stored fuels, as well as stable product quality during storage and the avoidance of unintentional mixing and product loss are supported, controlled and secured by highly precise measuring solutions.

Whether it is diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, or ethanol for blending, compliance with internationally recognized product specifications (e.g. ASTM or EN) and local equivalents is required for fuel trade at tank terminals, where legal regulations need to be fulfilled and complaints have to be avoided. Each fuel product is precisely characterised by a set of clearly-defined properties such as density, viscosity, flash point, distillation range, and oxidation stability. Ensuring in-spec values of these properties is not only important for trading fuels, but also for the safe and proper operation of the intended engine.

Supervise fuel movement and mass balance

Wherever quick decisions are needed prior to loading or unloading operations versatile measuring devices from Anton Paar are ready for operation not only in the traditional lab, but also directly at the pipeline or tank.

• Product identification: With an intrinsically safe portable density meter, quick fuel identification can be performed on-site, even in hazardous areas. Inline process density sensors precisely detect different products within only a second. This ensures minimized product loss and waste quantity which in turn directly affects a tank farm’s profitability.
• Product quantification: To avoid errors in volume-to-mass conversion, leading to tremendous financial losses, highly accurate laboratory and process instrumentation are used to convert the delivered fuel volume to mass which is the fundamental unit for trading liquids.
• Product classification: For checking the authenticity of fuels to avoid adulteration or impurities, and guaranteeing product quality, laboratory testing with density meters, viscometers, and Raman spectrometers is performed.

Secure your fuel storage and transportation

It is absolutely crucial for producers and consumers of petroleum fuels to guarantee high quality and to maintain this during storage and transportation. One major criterion to ensure the fuel properties do not change until used is sufficient oxidation stability. Any kind of contamination needs to be avoided as well for safe application.

• Stable product quality: To avoid engine failure due to contamination of fuels with particles and other impurities, it is essential to identify higher boiling oils or particulate matter using a gum content tester. Impurities can also appear as a consequence of prolonged fuel storage under bad storage conditions. An oxidation stability tester can simulate these conditions to prevent product alteration during storage and transport. As evaporation accounts for up to 2% product losses, again, during storage and transport, the boiling behavior of fuel products need to be classified using a distillation analyser.
• Safety classification: Determination of the flammability with a flash point tester is a critical analysis to define the hazard classification of liquids and provides important information for fuel product specifications.

View the full portfolio of Anton Paar’s fuel analysis solutions for the petroleum industry.