Closing the gap in drum and tote filling

In our coatings plant, we package a lot of light hydrocarbon blends. The biggest step change came when we moved from manual load cell stations to Coriolis batch skids tied to a small PLC. We added hardwired permissives before a single pound can flow: verified ground and bond, VRU vacuum within band, bung sensor, cap present, fill arm parked, no seal leak. That cut cycle time 18% and trimmed giveaway by 0.4% while reducing odor and venting incidents.

Two lessons learned. First, do not lean on LEL at the vent as a trip in nitrogen-blanketed service. Catalytic beads can lag or underread. We interlock on VRU pressure and use a PID at the vent for trend alarms only. Second, static at top-off matters. A two-speed fill profile with a low-rate finish, conductive dip tubes, and API RP 2003 bonding checks every cycle stopped the snap-and-pop issues.

For those in terminals, blend plants, or transmix cleanup, what has moved the needle for safe, fast Class I drum and tote filling? Anyone running dry-break couplers or tote vapor-balance lines without killing throughput? What did not live up to the promise?

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MikeHarlan

Jun 17 at 7:00 PM

We’ve had good luck running 1-inch high‑Cv dry-breaks on the liquid and a short 3/4-inch vapor-balance whip back to the VRU with a full‑port check and low - pressure‑drop arrester; keeping the VRU at about −0.5 to −1.0 in. WC kept odors down and limited the throughput hit to ~2 - 3%. What didn’t pan out: sintered arrestors and small‑bore vapor whips that choked flow, and optical bung/cap sensors that fouled in solvent mist - we switched to inductive prox on the cap arm plus a VRU pressure interlock.

Closing the gap in drum and tote filling

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