Safe Road Tanker Filling in a Hazardous Area

BASF is one of the world‘s leading chemical companies with posted sales of 42.7 billion euros in 2005 and around 95 000 employees on five continents. From crude oil and gas production to basic petrochemicals, intermediates and tailor-made specialties, BASF manufactures a very large number of products to supply the chemical industry, including products for the plastics, the agricultural & nutrition industries.

One of the most important delivery and distribution hubs for raw materials, intermediates and finished products is the BASF port facility in Tarragona, Spain. Every day a large number of trucks pick up and deliver materials for both BASF internal usage and the external market. All vehicles entering the facility are registered by personnel, who record the specifics of the vehicle, such as the driver, truck license and order. Included in the data is the weight or volume of the product to be received or deposited. This data is either resident in the SAP system or is added depending
on the type of transaction.

Because many of the materials that are processed through the facility can potentially ignite or explode when exposed to the open air and a spark, BASF treats the area surrounding the scales as an ATEX Zone 1 environment to ensure the safety of their workers, the environment and the facility.

When a vehicle is to be filled, it proceeds to one of the two scales where the driver leaves the truck. The operator secures the filling apparatus and grounds the vehicle to prevent sparks generated by static electricity.

The two METTLER TOLEDO scales, connected to METTLER TOLEDO weighing terminals, accurately transmit the truck’s weight to the control room via Profibus ® DP to a Siemens PLC. The operator presses start when they are ready to initiate the filling process. The PLC tares the scale and fills to a predetermined weight, specified in the order from the SAP system. The METTLER TOLEDO scale rapidly determines the weight change, and in conjunction with the PLC, the scale terminal stops the filling process when the truck reaches the exact target weight. The weight is also checked to ensure that the vehicle is within the over-the-road weight limits, as defined by European and Spanish laws.

Once the truck is filled, the driver registers back at the gate. The actual fill weight has already been transmitted and printed on the final documents that will accompany the truck.

The entire weighing system is designed for use in a Zone 1 hazardous area, meaning that it will not spark even under failure conditions such as a broken cable. Additionally, the scales require only routine calibration and won’t deliver different results even if the temperature or product changes.

Key Benefits
• Speed and flexibility to easily adapt to customer demand
• Minimize product loss caused by overfilling
• Eliminate product give-away
• 100 % inventory management and control
• No data loss because of manual transaction errors
• Full compliance with hazardous area regulations
• Complete calibration and maintenance services