Challenge
An Oil and Gas terminal had mixed 350 BBL of product (278 BBL of isobutane and 72 BBL of distillate) inside a 1.9 mile long section of pipeline. The company was going to push the mixed product to a LPG transport truck using a pig, and Envent was requested to control vapors on the truck to prevent it from overpressuring.

Solution
Envent provided a 20 million Btu/hour EMTOS, Envent Mobile Thermal Oxidizer, to handle the inflow of vapors into the LPG transport truck. Envent first depressured the LPG transport truck, which was at 55 PSI of propane before connecting to the pipeline. Envent also put a vacuum onto the truck so the isobutane could flash off from the distillate at a greater rate.

Benefit
The pipeline was successfully purged of the mixed product in 6 hours of operation. Also, because Envent was able to flash off most of the isobutane, only one transport truck was needed for the distillate to be loaded into. According to Envent’s calculations, if the isobutane had not been flashed off and destroyed as rapidly, then multiple transport trucks would have been needed. This added time would have more than doubled the completion time of the project.

Successfully purged the pipeline of the mixed product in 6 hours of operation