Hi everyone, Walthers do an excellent kit of the Oil loading fascility but what sort of equipment is used to unload oil at power stations. I’m using the Northern Lights power station kit and instead of it being coal fired, I thought it would be good to make it oil fired as I am modelling the present day.
Any help would be appreciated. Many thanks Colin Huckle Cambridge U.K.
Tank cars are unloaded from the bottom, through a valve and hose connection. When not in use the hose, which is similar in diameter to the hose your local fire department uses to hook up to a hydrant, is usually stored in such a way that any oil draining from it will not contaminate the soil.
If the car was simply dropped at the power plant for unloading later, there might also be separate, smaller hoses connected to a heating coil through fittings low on the tank end. The oil used to fire power plants (and, in the past, steam locomotives) has a consistency close to that of asphalt at normal air temperature, so it has to be heated to flow out of the tank.
I assume your model is a steam plant. If it uses diesel engines, it would receive lighter oil, which does flow without heating but uses the same unloading fittings.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Colin, I’ll expand just a bit on Chuck’s response, addressing more specifically what one might see at such a facility.
Admittedly, the size of off-loading/storage facilities for oil-fired power plants can vary considerably depending on the size, age and location, but with regard to the Walthers’ structure it would likely be very modest in this day and age. Odds favor in-ground storage tanks, so the visible portion of the process would simply be a small building/shack housing the pumps adjacent to a 4-inch, or so, diameter steel pipe likely with a shape like an inverted “J” or “L”, possibly topped with a shutoff valve, and perhaps 20’ of similar-sized attached heavy rubber hose for connecting to the tank car outlet (painted black, a piece of very small diameter solder makes a nice representation of this).
Considering that your plant will represent the modern day, you might also consider having a shallow concrete collection pit/basin below the tracks where the tank cars are off-loaded to catch any spills, otherwise the EPA will be after you in short order. [;)]
CNJ831
I don’t know specific US practice but, for modern day, I would look for the following…
The unloading point will almost be concrete floored surrounded by a bund (spill wall) and there is likely to be a specific drainage sump somewhere… in a small facility it might be in a corner with a pump feeding pipes to a waste disposal arrangement. A larger facility may have drains down the centre of the track with an out-of-sight lead away to a larger seperating facility - seperating rain water from spilled oil/gunk.
There will be earthing straps to be attached to the cars when unloading as well as the unloading and any other pipes.
A facility I got a brief look at recently basically had all the pipes arranged along one side of the track in a vertical stack on steel posts about 2 foot high. At car lengths there were valves and branches to the flexible pipes. The flex pipes were not left open but had end caps. In that case the pipes came from both ends to a central point where they turned away down the supporting bank to the factory. This could be at either end in a model.
At the turn away point there was a brick “office” building about 12’x12’ with a flat concrete roof.
One thing that I noticed in particular was that each pipe taking fuel away had a vertical pipe going up to a “breather” about 15’ high at this point. I know that this isn’t a correct technical description but what this looked like to me was the breather pipes that you see at a gas station serving the underground storage tanks.
These days all walkways are neat and solid. If they leave the surface they are steel grids like the walkways on the tankcars themselves. The way over the bund walls is similar construction with steel hand rails.
The bund walls aren’t very high… about 24"-30"… The gap at
“Dave the Train” descibes the 15 foot vertical breather. In the days before vapor recovery systems these would act exactly the way a “drain vent” in your home plumbing would work. The air and vapor escaping from the lower parts of the piping and buried tanks has to get out. Without the drain vents the system would belch air/vapor anywhere it could and would slow down unloading.
New systems have a similar system but “closed” so that any air/vapor is trapped and not allowed to vent to the atmosphere. The height has to be well above the highest point the oil would be in a tank car for example. Otherwise the oil would flow out of the top of the drain vent.
Chris
Thankyou , to all who have contributed to this request. A lot of useful information has come to light. The Walthers power station, in my case is being used more as a boiler house for the adjacent paper mill and we must assume that due its dated form of construction, that it was originally coal fired but has gone over to oil. Colin huckle
Oil fueled power stations use #6 fuel oil which is a thick black tar-like liquid. Why?? Because it is much less expensive that other fuels like #2 oil which is similar to diesel fuel.
The tank cars delivering this product would be insulated with heating coils. If the oil gets too cool, it will not flow well so a steam line needs to be connected to the car to heat it up and lower the viscosity.