#BUTANE TRANSLOADER PORTABLE#

“Each client has different situations, whether it’s distances and locations of equipment, and what sort of technologies or solutions will suffice,” Forchuk said. “If the rail cars are stopping, we can bring in that infrastructure with power to perform these types of transfers,” Forchuk said.Īs businesses and their associated projects grow, the company can utilize bullet tanks to assist in transfers. In these situations, Sky Eye might deploy an intermediate component with generation, with the goal of moving product quickly.

#BUTANE TRANSLOADER PORTABLE#

In exploratory ventures, like moving product in emerging markets in Mexico, or in others where capital’s deployed to understand the business, portable hydraulic techniques are effective solutions. application, and an operation’s complexity. Sky Eye, which bills itself as a hydrocarbon transfer and measurements solutions specialist, uses different utility “drive” gasses, such as nitrogen and natural gas, to pressurize and sweep rail cars for liquid butane and propane, depending on capital cost vs. “In each scenario, whether we go from a brownfield facility to a new-venture rail spur that’s going to be there for six to 12 months, understanding the different mechanisms and properties of that fluid and how it wants to act, and the gasses, will start to guide us in what direction we go for a solution,” Forchuk said.įorchuk touched on approaches to transloading his company deploys, including using drive gasses, pumps and compressors, and the importance of engineering safety into transloaders, in the “Advancements in transloading LPG and butane” session at the International Liquid Terminal Association’s 38th Annual International Operating Conference & Trade Show in Houston, Texas.

The key, said John Forchuk, Sky Eye’s vice-president of business development, is to recognize the various challenges associated with moving LPG and butane from railcar to truck, including distance, weather and infrastructure, and then providing a versatile array of solutions to meet those challenges. If you would like to discuss your particular Propane & Butane Railcar Transload project and site considerations please contact Mike Gaudet at 71 or be glad to help.SKY Eye Measurement, founded in 2005 in Acheson, Alberta, Canada, is growing into a leader in liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and butane transloading, building a successful business on the fundamentals of safety, performance and reliability. Do I have the time to transload butane at a slower rate in my cold months, what impact does that have on the railyard and keeping the gasses moving. The operator can, at the end of the transload process purge the lines back into the supply source, or if the concern is very high a nitrogen purge system can be added. The properties of propane and butane are similar enough that the amount of product left in the lines when switching from transloading one to the other is negligible.

Can I Transload Propane and Butane in the same system? It becomes difficult to transload butane unless you are using some sort of heat trace system to keep the temperature up. Transloading butane is different than propane in cold weather as butanes physical property changes dramatically causing almost no vapor pressure at all. In very cold temperatures it is difficult to get good flow rates when Transloading Butane from rail cars.

You can beef us your compressor, but propane has a high enough vapor pressure that unless you require a significantly high transload rate even in the winter the cost to your ROI isn’t worth it. The railcar transload speed can decrease as much as 25 – 30%. Transloading propane in cold temperatures impacts the speed in which you can move the product. Propane volume rises in warmer temperature and falls in lower temperatures. The volume of any liquid in any container is directly related to its temperature. It is important to know what the ambient temperature will be at your site when you expect to unload each product (Propane C3H8 or Butane C4H10). Let’s evaluate the temperature side first. There are multiple considerations as you finalize how you will be moving both butane and propane at your facility.

Butane transloader