Three Canister RTO for Tank Car Loading and Unloading Terminal

The Challenge

Generally speaking, with the loading and unloading of truck terminals there are multiple loading and unloading stations. At a given time, one, two or three, or as many as eight tank cars can be loaded or unloaded. When the Tank Trucks are unloaded, it causes a lot of vapor to be released to atmosphere. These emissions have to be controlled and can not be released to atmosphere. In the past, archaic Open Flare technology was used.

Flares are extremely inefficient and there is no guarantee of Destruction Removal Efficiency (DRE). Additionally, there was a good portion of unburned fuel in this major Tank Truck operation. This particular application was located in a residential area where there were also a lot of chlorinated hydrocarbons.

These operations have been prone to a large number of explosions and accidents because of the high exothermic heat release and sudden heating of the system. The fire will travel to and destroy the terminal. 

The Tank Truck Loading and Unloading Terminal was looking for a way to safely capture and destroy the fugitive emissions in the operations to remain compliant with new environmental regulations.

The Solution

This particular customer came to Epcon and discussed various technologies and we offered a large capacity RTO which automatically detected and increased in capacity when the high-concentration vapor was introduced. Until then, Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO) technology had never been used at Tank Terminals.

The Results

Epcon was able to achieve better fuel consumption compared to the Flare with the Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer and also handle the variable fluctuation and higher loading. 

Because of the high Heat Exchanger efficiency, the fuel consumption always stayed the same. For upset conditions, Epcon provided a High-Solvent Bypass as a Heat Release.