Petro/ Chemical Wash bays.

after you empty the truck how much residual Sabutol Bottoms is left is any trapping areas? Hopefully the tank is made to have zero trap volume, but it will still have some residual amount of Sabutol Bottoms wetting walls etc. So if this is 10 gallons and the tank is 10,000 the butanol will be contaminated by 1/1000 parts of Sabutol Bottoms.

If this is not tolerable, you will then have to spray the inside with butanol and drain it 2-3 times, drain after each rinse. With careful use of a fine spray you will be able to spray the inside with 5 gallons of butanol times three = 15 gallons wasted. I use butanol as that is the next fluid the tank will hold, so any residue of that is not a problem.

Usually tankers have a built in spray line for this purpose, but their built in may use more than 5 gallons for a flush. Tanker operators have lookup tables for what flushing to use between various fluids to deliver clean product to the client, and some fluids are tolerant of crud and others are not. The larger operators also have tankers used only for some classes of fluids to reduce these cleaning costs, since if you delivered butanol in the first place you would need no cleanup for a successor load of the same butanol.

Hi Aurizon,

Good fundamental principal, but this is Africa, some of these road tankers were built when Noah was a little lad. Although we are moving to ADR standard, we still have a long way to go. Tank specs are still very primitive in relation to European standards.

Tanker operators have lookup tables for what flushing to use between various fluids to deliver clean product to the client, and some fluids are tolerant of crud and others are not.

Now this is what I require! What products are compatible, what would buffer products can be used etc etc. Any idea where I could find links related to your statement. I know this is a rather heavy request, due to the large amount of chemicals transported by road. The primary requirement is:"If I load product A. what level of cleanliness would I require to load a non compatible product B." What defines a tanker as "clean to load any other product"

Hope that gives a bit more clarity for U, I sure as hell, just gone and confused the c**p out of myself.

Thanks

Mongoose

a general search gives this.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22tanker+truck%22+%2Bcleaning+%2Bhydrocarbon&btnG=Search

you might try some of the major US interstate trucking companies for references.

Most companies clean their trucks and refer to the Material Safety Data
Sheets (MSDS) for the material they are going to pick up to make sure it is compatible with the pipes, walls and gaskets of their truck. Once they have dealt with a product successfully they will add to their database and they will also include the clean up costs in their quotation. The larger ones have special food grade trucks that are only used for food grade materials.

Thanx, that gives me something to work on over the week end, I believe Chemical Lehman had the most impressive database concerning the cleaning etc of road tankers. Not sure what happened to them, think they were bought out by Dow Chemicals??? I have all the MSDS's for SCI.

Hopefully with the link you've given me I will be able to establish just how "clean", "clean" is.

Cheers, have a great week end!(16:30 here in S.A. knock off time)

hi,

do you have a branch in Syria, or do you have any supplier over there?

thanks

Hi Guest,

Could you possibly give me some more information as to what exactly your requirements are? We are part of one of the largest inspectorate industries in the world as regards the Oil, Gas and Chemical industry.

You can contact me on my company e-mail address: dennis_witham@sgs.com (there is an underscore between my name and surname)

I would be more than happy to follow up on any queries you do have.

Regards

D.