Tanks automatic calibration at petrol stations without stopping the sales

Solution #

At petrol stations horizontal cylindrical steel tanks are used to store petroleum products. The tank is a measuring instrument that has a calibration table compiled during its manufacture process. The calibration chart is a document, which stores correspondence between the fuel height in tank and its volume. The tank calibration chart is used for calculation of the fuel volume remains in tanks, in-tank deliveries registration, temperature-compensated volume calculation, others.

During operation tanks tend to change their parameters due to various types of deformations and external influences: this may be deformation of the body of the tank, tank tilt, foreign objects entering the tank, etc. Therefore, during operation of the tank the initial calibration chart of the tank becomes more and more different from its real calibration chart. The discrepancy between the actual calibration chart and the initial chart, which was provided from the factory at tank supply, leads to the loss of real accounting of the movement of petroleum products. It leads to a necessity to provide periodically tank recalibration in order to prepare a new actual calibration chart, which corresponds to present tank state.

Classical method of tank recalibration includes emptying of the tank from fuel and then a special procedure of filling and draining the tank with water. This procedure is quite costly because it requires a special equipment and also you need to stop the operations with the tank, which leads to stopping of the petrol station's operation.

In order to make this procedure to be simple and to keep your tanks to have the actual calibration chart without a need to stop the petrol station operation, we in Technotrade company added the tanks automatic calibration procedure directly in the PTS-2 forecourt controller.

The PTS-2 forecourt controller is able to perform tanks automatic calibration automatically without stopping the petrol station operation. The process is fully automated and each tank’s calibration chart is automatically calculated and adjusted in the process of the tank operations. For this process the PTS-2 forecourt controller communicates to both the pumps and the ATG probes installed inside the tanks. In the result of this process the PTS-2 forecourt controller forms and constantly adjusts the accurate calibration charts for each of the tanks, which suit to their actual state and which are used for precise calculation of the fuel volume remains in tanks, in-tank deliveries registration, temperature-compensated volume calculation and other technological processes.

Calculation and formation of tank calibration charts is performed automatically during the system operation using results of measurement, received from the ATG probes installed inside the tanks and from the fuel dispensers, which fill the fuel. The system does not need any stoppage of the petrol station operation. The PTS-2 forecourt controller supports more than 200 brands of dispensers and ATG probes from various manufacturers.