Robert Feller – Eastern Tank Services Corporation
The opportunity exists to the company [ETSC] for a money making environmentally sound business to clean out rail road tank cars that have been used to transport crude oil down from North Dakota to the various refineries in the southern Philadelphia area. At present there is approximately 10 miles worth of 23,000-gallon rail cars on sidings stretching from the refineries up through the border of Pennsylvania & New York. The reason is that the crude oil from North Dakota has high levels of paraffins and therefore a high degree of clingage inside the rail car after it is drained by gravity. To the owner of the rail cars [GATX & others] this is a waste product; for our purposes this is a completely recoverable energy source that can be easily resold on the spot market.
Current ways to clean railcars and barges in the maritime involve putting a crew of men inside the railcar with squeegee tools and pressure washers to in effect scrape out the tank. This involves having a Safety Officer to assign the ‘confined space’ tank work under Federal OSHA guidelines and generates a large volume of oily wastewater to dispose of; a costly and time-consuming process. ETSC has aligned itself with Industrial Innovations Incorporated of Stockton, CA. to acquire a complete Super M.A.C.S. tank cleaning system that will allow for multiple rail road tank car cleaning operations simultaneously but also reuse of the wash water and complete recovery of the hydrocarbon component for resale. The technology is well proven and currently being used by multiple refineries along the west coast and GATX has a stationary system they purchased several years ago in Athens, Georgia giving more credibility to the technology and its performance.
The equipment is transportable and requires only 3 employees to operate the entire system; the equipment does the work and not the employees. Set-up for rail car cleaning can be accomplished in 2 to 3 hours and round the clock operations are possible. Liability insurance requirements is, or environmental exposure is all but eliminated sine the system is a closed loop for the cleaning cycle. During the cleaning process 100% of the recoverable oil is collected, solids separated & discharged clean enough for landfill disposal and the wash water is reused. Once the job is finished the wash water can be trucked offsite for proper disposal according to local requirements and the system moved to the next location.
Four 23,000-gallon rail road tank cars can be cleaned simultaneously in less than 1 hour and set aside to complete the drying cycle. The cleaning process can be done regardless of the weather conditions and is only dependent upon timely deliveries of diesel fuel to keep the Super M.A.C.S. running.
