Improving the efficiency of oil vapor recovery units in the commodity transport operations at oil terminals

Abstract

In this paper the problem of losses from evaporation of light fractions of hydrocarbons during loading operations of tanker fleets vessels is considered. It was found that there is no unified approach to modeling the system “tanker – gas phase pipeline – vapor recovery units” in open sources. The absence of a generally recognized model makes it impossible to scientifically justify the application of instruments to reducing losses and the development of corresponding measures. In work it is showed that the dynamics of growth of pressure in the inner tanker capacity is described by a differential equation, considering for non-stationary essence of the process. This equation is converted to a non-dimensional form and investigated in relation to the similarity criteria of this system. This research has allowed to establish unambiguously the general character of pressure changes in the inner tanker capacity, and to predict the peak values of its growth at the initial stage of the loading operation. The obtained equations were tested on real tanker loading data and showed satisfactory convergence with the experimental data. At different stages of the loading opera-tion the component composition of vapor changes, which is shown by chromatographic analysis of the gas mixture. With the availability of a model of hydrocarbon vapor displacement from the inner of tanker, it is possible to propose measures to minimize the negative impact on the environment and return valuable vapors of the product to the technological chain of transportation.

Keywords

• oil tanker
• marine terminals
• evaporation loss
• crude
• oil terminal
• vapor recovery units
• volatile organic compounds
• oil losses