Fiery Freeway Crash Kills Trucker
LONG BEACH, Calif. (June 14) – A tanker truck hauling 8,000 gallons of ethanol crashed and exploded into an inferno that sent a river of fire into storm drains, killed the driver and blocked major highways.
A huge hole in your arguement is all Ethanol can’t be shipped by rail.
The Truck is part of the regional/local delivery system.
I hope that poor driver didn’t burn to death. I know he’s dead anyway, but I hope he was dead or unconscious when the fire got him.
Why can’t ethanol be shipped by rail? If there are no pipelines handy and trucking is unsafe, what’s going to happen? - a.s.
(1) Ethanol and pipelines don’t mix…ethanol is invasive as heck - you can’t segregate the product…saltwater plugs won’t hold it at all…
(2) There are multiple poorly placed ethanol plants set up and in operation w/o rail service. Several I know of were the first to fail at market saturization…Agridummies get some very bizarre ideas about how the world really works.
Pipelines aren’t good for the ethanol either. Ethanol picks up condensation from the ground in a pipeline. Pure ethanol goes in one end, watered down ethanol comes out the other end.
Here’s the thing, though.
Ethanol cannot be carried by pipeline. It has to do with the product’s absorbtion of condensation in the pipeline. Ethanol must be carried by tanker, either truck or railroad.
Ethanol is an ideal product to transport by rail. Part of the problem is the lack of rail access to the ethanol refineries, either by abandonment or just plain bad logistical ignorance on the part of the ethanol producers.
One more bad thing about that wreck. The freeway will not be fully open for a few more days.[:O]
Ethanol can most certainly be pipelined. Just not on commercial terms in a standard pipeline designed for liquid hydrocarbons!
Two problems occur:
-
Ethanol has high water affinity, that is, water dissolves into it. Any water that is introduced during the petroleum refining, blending, storage, or transportation process – and this is by no means uncommon – instead of being readily separable at the pipeline terminus as it would be from a hydrocarbon fuel, dissolves into the ethanol and renders it useless as a fuel. Thus the ethanol can’t be blended with the gasoline and then pipelined, because it picks up all the water. (Note – water does not penetrate through the pipeline wall, it gets into the pipeline by tagging along with the petroleum product out of the tanks or refinery.)
-
Ethanol is highly corrosive to ordinary carbon steel, particularly welds and seams, causing stress fractures that are difficult to detect prior to failure of the pipe. Pressure magnifies the problem. Pipelining pure ethanol magnifies it even more. Tank cars are not nearly as vulnerable as they can be lined, are not pressurized, are much thicker walled, and are much easier to inspect for corrosion and effect repairs.
Ethanol can be pipelined in systems that are designed to reject water at the entrance and use a corrosion-resistant steel. I believe there is only one such pipeline of any significant length in the U.S. so far, and it’s unlikely there will be more in the forseeable future due to high cost of construction and low economic value of such a pipeline.
RWM
To say nothing of the appalling, unswitchable, unworkable, unsafe track layouts at many of these plants. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I was presented the track plans for a “standard” ethanol plant – I’ve never seen anything quite so wrong in my life.
Here’s how the conversation went:
Them: “Could you go talk to the regional VP and see why he’s being such a jerk about this plant that’s being built, and is refusing to switch it?”
Me: “You mean … this track layout … is being built? Just like this?”
Them: “Yes. Actually it already is built. And there’s 10 more under construction. Why?”
Me: "Because it’s a mess. Who designed this?
Them: “The experts hired by the ethanol company/”
Me: “Really! Experts in rail?”
Them. “Yes, so will you go talk to the VP and fix this problem for us?”
Me: “No. Your rail experts can go do it.”
RWM
We know that ethanol comes from the large agricultural refineries. But where does it go to be added to the retail grade gasoline ? I’m thinking that it doesn’t go to the corner gas station in truckload quantities, but maybe to such places as the nearby Buckeye Pipeline tank farm terminal between Emmaus and Macungie, and in trainload quantities to the big oil company’s refineries such as Exxon, Sunoco, Valero, etc., where’s it’s added to the gas before shipment. So I don’t see where trucking is practical or economic for those quantities over long distances. Locally such as from a rail terminal or refinery to a distribution or blending plant, yes.
If an ethanol plant is “stranded” because of a poor siting decision or an unworkable rail yard design, then why not just build a comparatively shorter pipeline - say, 5 to 20 miles - to reach a rail head where an acceptable yard already exists or can be built ? Although a major unforseen expense, that would seem to be financially better than just losing the multi-$100 million investment in the plant(s), no ?
- Paul North.
Ethanol is added to the petroleum fuel at blending terminals, the locations where product is extracted from pipeline, barge/ship, or rail cars, or directly from the refinery output stream, and transferred to truck for final haul to the gas station. I have a complete list of them for the U.S. and there are a lot of them. In your typical big city of say, 3 million people, there might easily be 10 such terminals.
It would be a lot cheaper to simply rebuild the rail yard and the main track connections than try to permit and build a pipeline. But the reason no one is doing much about a solution is that many of these $100 million ethanol plants really are stranded. The market was overtonnaged badly in some areas resulting in too many plants bidding for too little corn, or the plants were built in downstream locations and cannot bid for the corn + transportation and compete with ethanol manufactured nextdoor to the cornfield. When you look to see what the liquidation price is for the brand-new plants of the bankrupt ethanol producers, it’s breathtaking. Some of them have found buyers only at 10 cents on the dollar. Some others can’t find a buyer at any price.
RWM
RWM, thanks again as always for the insights. Another good day - a couple of new things learned !
- PDN.
Like this? What doesn’t show up is how big a hill it is going down into the plant. The long track holds about 26-27 cars, and they send the crews out there with 50 loads to spot regularly.
Or are other plants worse?
I know of one (bankrupt) plant that shipped ethanol 60+ miles by truck to load into railcars. The plant had rail service, the owner just didn’t want to deal with that railroad. So he trucked the stuff to a different plant he had his fingers in.
An accident is no argument in favor of one mode over the other…after all…trains also have accidents…I really doubt trucking does alot of longhaul intercity ethanol transport…most truck moves are probably local in nature…from the railhead or plant to end user.
I’m familiar with the port of Providence, RI where Motiva energy has a major fuel tank farm. Tank cars of ethanol are spotted there so I presume that the blending happens at the tanker truck loading facilities. This makes some sense given that the percentage of Ethanol in the blend goes up in the summer (due to smog control regulations)…
That one is delightful compared to some I’ve seen. Does it really switch right across a public road?
RWM
Hey Railway Man, how about a short primer on yard design? What makes a yard “switchable” or not? And what are some of the criteria you look for in location, layout and design? Having (mis?)spent my life in aviation I am ignorant of the nuts and bolts of railroading, but I find it fascinating to learn. So, what works and what doesn’t?
Tim
In most cases, we ship direct to terminals who splash blend³ on-site from their own storage tanks. Example, Albany²; Sewaren¹ ², NJ; Linden¹ ², NJ; Ft. Worth²; S. Chicago (NS); Lima, OH¹; Spartensburg, SC; Columbus, OH; Commerce City, CO¹; Pasadena, TX¹; Greer, SC; Lesperance, MO²; East St. Louis(Sauget, IL)²; Toledo, OH¹; Tacoma, WA; Phoenix, AZ²; Portsmouth, VA; Las Vegas, NV, Knoxville, TN; Sparks, NV; Cleveland, OH, Cameron, VA; N. Little Rock, AR; Reno, NV; Nampa, ID; Altoona, PA; Memphis, TN¹; Bayport, TX¹; Midland, NC; Lafayette, IN; Oakley, OH; Tampa, FL; Pipeola, AZ²; Searsport, ME; Tarrant, TX; El Paso, TX¹; Mechanicsburg, PA; Doralville, GA; Philadelphia, PA¹; Boise, ID; Atlanta, GA; West Lang, BC; Valley, NV; Denmark, SC; Tucson, AZ; Norfolk, VA; Shreveport, LA; Canton, OH¹; Denton, SC; Birmingham, AL; Baltimore, MD; Petal, MS; Selma, SC; Fairburn, GA; and Petersburg, VA. These are the terminals I am faimiliar with.
Trans-loading ethanol adds expense which ethanol marketers try real hard to avoid. It makes much more dollars and sense to rail it directly to the rack locations. Most rack locations are on a pipeline from the refineries.
¹ These are locations which also have petroleum refineries.
² Both units and singles are shipped to these locations, and they also distribute via barge and truck from these terminals in addition to splash blending on-site.
³ Splash blending is when the ethanol is mixed with other additives as the delivery truck is being loaded with gasoline at the rack.
I cannot think of one plant who does not have rail.
Plants at Lakota, IA and Glenville, MN both ship from the plant to Manly Terminal via truck to load into units for CN. Both have rail at their plants, although in the case of Lakota, did not expand the physical plant when they tripled their production. Thus, they cannot load units.