Performance at Pernis: A New Loading Facility Gives Shell Throughput and Energy Efficiency Gains
OK, perhaps loading refinery products into trucks isn't a very exciting business. That may be true unless perhaps you plan to load about 10,000 trucks a year at one facility and have stringent environmental requirements for emissions. Then it gets pretty interesting. Shell contracts with Royal Vopak to manage this loading for their refinery at Pernis in the Netherlands. Vopak in turn uses Emerson's SmartProcess Terminal Management Solution to run the loading facility. Results to date include reduction of required operational hours from 24 to 16, headcount reduced from ten to six, operational costs have been reduced 20%, and electrical energy consumption has been reduced to zero by burning vapors returned from the trucks to both generate electricity and eliminate emissions. Details of this were documented in PROCESS Worldwide in the November issue article "Performance at Pernis". (203KB PDF)
