Automated Tank Gauging For Hydrocarbon Storage Systems - An Experimental Approach

The Oil and Gas industries are situated all around the globe in various remote locations, where there is crude or natural gas to be extracted. These locations are subjected to extreme weather conditions going above 50ºC all the way down to -30ºC. During transit of petroleum product from one location to another location, their temperature influences the volume and leads to financial loss. The error free measurement of the hydrocarbon storage volume with highest accuracy is the need of the petroleum industry. The current volume correction methods introduced are manual and involve more human interventions and leads to error. The objective of this paper is to observe the volume of a storage tank on the field and create a device, which reports the stored hydrocarbon volume by measuring the density, average temperature. The average temperature is computed using multipoint temperature sensor. Based on the parametric evaluation of the density, average temperature of the stored hydrocarbon volume correction factor is calculated automatically, considering the petroleum standards. This enables to measure accurate volume measurement and minimizes the error losses occurring due to temperature changes in the stored hydrocarbon. The proposed automatic system is tested experimentally and compared with the manual calculation system and observed to be highly efficient. The developed customized software system is able to reduce the human errors and volume estimation time.