Oil Transloading metering for Truck/Railcar unloading/loading!

Yokogawa has released a panel packaged solution for metering truck/railcar unloading and loading based on the FCN-RTU (Remote terminal unit) low-power autonomous controller of the STARDOM™ network-based control system. This new packaged solution has been developed to meet the requirements of our customers in the high-growth upstream oil & gas industries and complies with API MPMS 11.1, 11.4, 20.1, and ERCB Directive 17 guidelines.

Development Background
With the rapid advance in oil and gas well drilling over the past few years, pipelines have not kept pace with new drilling sites.  Many wells rely on truck and railcar transport to get the oil to refineries and distribution centers.  With this increase in demand, customers reported that they were having the following issues with supplied components for their transloading and custody transfer solutions:

•  Unreliable (PC-based) HMI
•  High failure rate of motor/valve contactor
•  Long delivery times of 8 - 12+ weeks
•  Difficult to support vendor supplied components
•  Unreliable water cut
•  Salinity out of range of calculation
•  Unreliable net oil readings due to entrained gas
•  Too high power consumption for remotely located panels requiring solar power
•  Too narrow range of density to meet new crude oil well needs

Yokogawa Corporation of America carefully examined the customers’ needs and designed a low-power, reliable solution that meets industry needs.

Yokogawa’s approach packages a 4σ reliability net oil computer with a standard panel containing all the components needed to bring in flow, temperature, pressure, valve, and permissive IO to create a net oil metering solution for trucks, tanks, and railcars.  This reduces the delivery time to 6 weeks or better and delivers a pre-configured package where parameter can be easily re-configured instead of requiring full engineering and programming at the site.

Product Features
1. Fully pre-packaged, pre-configured net oil computer solution

• Pre-configured for four different types of coriolis and water cut meters
• Configurable for up to four different salinity / brine density calculation methods
• Supports 1 year of data logging for each transaction
• Supports e-tickets/logs and paper printed tickets

2. Improved operating ranges

• Temperatures  ranging from −20°C to +70°C. These enhanced components are thus well suited for use in the very cold or hot weather conditions that can be encountered at oil and gas drilling sites
• 0% to 16%+ salinity 
• Supports stand-alone and networked database and logging solution
• Low power consumption by net oil computer (as low as 1.6W )
• Covers full range of fluids governed within the API MPMS 11.1 standard:
  * Crude oil and refined products (610.6 to 1163.5 kg/m3 @60°F) OR (611.16 to 1163.79 kg/m3 @15°C)
  * Lubricating oil (800.9 to 1163.5 kg/m3 @60°F) OR (801.25 to 1163.85 @15°C)

3. Liquid (Currently North America only) and gas flow meter net oil corrections accurate to within 1%.

STARDOM supports both liquid and gas calculations that are compliant with API MPMS standards

Major Target Markets
 - Widely distributed facilities such as those used in oil and gas well and water and wastewater applications
 - Oil wells, tank batteries, custody transfer stations, transloading transfer skids, on trucks, at railcar loading and distribution centers
 - Water disposal wells and treatment centers