Benzene Vapour Recovery:

A Ship Loading Installation

with an Efficiency of 99.999%
A NKER J ARL J ACOBSEN , Cool Sorption A/S, Glostrup, Denmark

ABSTRACT
he new low requirements for benzene in gasoline
have made benzene extraction and handling of raw
benzene a common task at many refineries. The
Shell Refinery in Frederica, Denmark, is one of these
and has a substantial export of raw benzene by ship.
During ship loading of the benzene heart cut (60-70%
benzene) at the refinerys marine loading terminal,
the vapours are collected and returned to the jetty. A
Cool Sorption Vapour Recovery Unit takes care of the
air pollution control with an efficiency of 99,999%
thereby ensuring that the emission remains under
the limit for benzene, which in Denmark and many
other countries is 5 mg/m3 .

INTRODUCTION
When Shell, Denmark, applied to the national authorities in order to obtain a licence to ship liquid with a high
content of benzene, they received permission on condition that the emission during the loading operation
was kept below 5 mg/m3. This requirement implies
extremely high efficiency of the recovery process since
the concentrated carcinogenic vapour from the ship can
reach a concentration of several hundreds of g/m3.
The Vapour Recovery Unit (VRU) was in addition also
required to handle all other hydrocarbon vapours,
mostly gasoline vapours, emitted during loading from
the product harbour. For these vapours the Danish
regulations require the emissions to be less than 150 mg/m3.
Cool Sorption has met these requirements by use of a
specially designed Carbon Vacuum Regenerated
Adsorption type of VRU. In addition the short project
time schedule was maintained, with the plant being ordered
3rd July 1997 and handed over after commissioning to
Shell 1st July 1998.
The independent institute DK-Teknik, which is
approved by the national authorities, tested the VRU during
4 hours of benzene heart cut loading. The test methods
used were continuous screening with a flame ionisation
detector calibrated on propane and regular sampling on
double carbon tubes for subsequently desorption and
gas chromatograph analyses. The results showed an
emission, which on average was lower than 1 mg/m3 for
benzene. The total hydrocarbon emissions including

methane was found to be 98 mg/m3, which should be

compared against the requirement of 150 mg/m3,
excluding methane.

Figure 1
The vapour recovery unit sited
near the loading arms

CONNECTION TO THE SHIPS

The concentration and composition of the vapours
from the ship are dependent on the previous load, the
loading time for each compartment (loading one at a time
or many parallel), the Reid vapour pressure and actual
temperature of the product. In the beginning of the loading
in each compartment the concentrations of the vapours
will typically be 100-200 g/m3 and completely dominated
by the previous load. The final concentration will
typically be more than 1000 g/m3, dependent on the
composition and parameters of the actual loaded
product. The development of the concentration from the
beginning to the end of loading also depends on the physical
shape of the ship and whether the ship rolls during the
loading, but the average concentration from product loading
in a harbour is approximately one third of the saturated
vapour concentration.
The ships oil tanks are normally equipped with a local
pressure relief valve and a connection to a common
manifold pipe placed in the middle of the deck, making
this suitable for attachment to a vapour recovery system.
One or two vent risers are typically connected to the
manifold by a manually controlled valve. This manifold
system is also used for purging with inert gas if crude
oil is being shipped and the same system is used on some

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247

Figure 2 (right)
The upstream layout

Figure 3 (below)
A two-filter pressure
swing system is needed

connection flange at the ship the vapours can be led

to the land based vapour header by a simple hose
connection or an additional loading arm. The best
solution depends on the loading velocity and the
existing equipment.
Depending on the loading rate required at the terminal,
different approaches can be taken when designing the vapour
collection system. At the Frederica terminal there is an
200 mm hose fixed to a product-loading arm, which makes
an efficient, simple, and cheap solution. For a crude oil
vapour VRU installed by Cool Sorption at Sture in
Norway, where the vapour flow rate can be as high as 17,000
m3 per hour, a 400 mm separate loading arm handles the
vapours. While at many of our VRU installations at
German river harbours, the vapours are handled by one
or two 100 mm hoses, placed on a hose drum, and
manually drawn to the connection on the ship.

UPSTREAM OF THE VRU

product tankers. Even though a ship is able to withstand

a fairly high over pressure (120 kPa), the manifold is
sometimes dimensioned so small that only a slight
overpressure is available for the additional installation
of a VRU. This problem is very much a subject for an
international standard.
The vapours can be guided from the tanker to a
shore-based VRU in many ways. There is always a
blind flange somewhere on the manifold, which
can be used, but the best solution is to install one or
two horizontal T-pipes to the manifold as described
in IMO MSC585. This brings the vapour connection
point nearer to the liquid product connection points.
At the vapour pipe, just upstream of this connection
flange, we recommend the placement of a valve
and a drain point for condensed water. From the

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Especially on seagoing ships which are fitted with inert

gas systems, the vapour manifold on the ship is subjected
to humid vapour and furthermore the inert gas is
usually exhaust gas which is rich not only in CO2 but also
in SO2. Consequently corrosion in this manifold system
produces substantial amounts of fine rust powder,
which need to be handled prior to entering the VRU. A
particle size of less than 1 mg together with saturated
humidity has made the use of a special deep filter necessary. It is also necessary to have a well determined fall
in the vapour inlet pipes upstream the VRU, in order to
lead the condensed water to a knockout pot at the
VRU or other suitable location.
For safety reasons the risk for propagation of a fire
is avoided by installation of either detonation proof flame
arresters at both ends of the vapour header or one bidirectional detonation arrester in the vapour header. Special
precautions are necessary for arresters at the benzene
plant. Benzene is solid at +6C, and therefore the flame
arresters need to be insulated and traced. In the actual
case the benzene rich mixture had a solidification point
of -15C, so no special precautions were necessary.

Figure 4
VRU control is by a PLC
combined with PC monitoring

CARBON VACUUM REGENERATED ADSORPTION

VAPOUR RECOVERY SYSTEM
The VRU installed at Shells marine loading facility
at Fredericia is a Carbon Vacuum Regenerated
Adsorption type, in which the incoming vapour is
adsorbed by the activated carbon in one of the two
beds whereby the cleaned air can leave from the top
of the bed. Due to the limited capacity of the
activated carbon it is necessary to regenerate the carbon
and remove the adsorbed hydrocarbons, thus to
make continuous treatment possible a two-filter
pressure swing system is needed. During the regeneration cycle the vapours are removed as a pure, almost
airless hydrocarbon gas by the means of a liquid ring
vacuum pump. The pure hydrocarbon gas is reabsorbed
in a stream of fresh gasoline which is recycled to the
nearby storage tank. This solution has been chosen
because the VRU is intended to handle both benzene
and gasoline vapours.
In order to be able to desorb the large benzene
molecules from the activated carbon, the selected type
of activated carbon has exceptionally high porosity.
The whole VRU is also dimensioned to take into account
the purge airflow under regeneration, which is necessary to reach the very high requirements for efficiency.
In addition it is important to ensure an even flow of vapour
through the carbon beds in order to avoid channels or
shadow with poor regeneration, which can lower
both the efficiency and capacity of the VRU. This
potential problem is avoided by careful design of both
the inlet and outlet end of the carbon beds.
The VRU control is by a PLC combined with PC
monitoring. This system makes a perfect process
overview possible for the operator and makes remote
overview and control very easy. In Frederica there are
remote control possibilities both from the refinery
control room and from the Cool Sorption office, 200 km
away. Different parameters like liquid level, temperatures,
pressures, flows and valve controllers can be seen from
the remote location, where from it is possible to make
adjustments to these set points thereby making qualified
service very fast and efficient.

PLANT SAFETY
The CVA plant was designed and constructed in accordance with a technical standard based on the Shell
DEP regulations. The plant safety analysis is based on
a Hazop study in which it is required that for critical situations no accident can occur even if three different
independent faults occur at the same time. Therefore the
plant is designed to ensure full passive safety is achieved,
in addition to a complete active control system. The passive
safety features are mainly based on a 10 bar overpressure test of all parts of the plant and detonation proof
flame arresters at the plant inlet.
The active safety features consist of a close network
of alarm sensors monitoring the temperatures, pressures,
valve positions, liquid levels, etc. To take only one
example, the absolute level in the absorber vessel is
protected by the control system plus two independent high
level sensors, based on two different operation methods.
All over the plant there are pneumatically operated
spring return valves, which only need activation from one
of the mentioned alarms to close the plant down safely.

SERVICE
CSA offers different degrees of services on our plants.
Most importantly we recommend a general service
check once a year taking 3 to 5 days, during which we
check all mechanical parts, adjustments, and alarms as
well as the efficiency. We know from our experience that
this annual planned maintenance largely reduces the risk
for unplanned outages of the VRU. This means that
planned maintenance pays for itself in the form of
increased plant reliability with consequent higher return
of recovered product.
In case of any kind of fault appearance we give a fast
and efficient service, either by our own service engineers
or by local service companies with which we have an agreement. In addition to this, CSA can also offer to take over
the responsibility of the total operation of the plant. In
this case CSA have all plant data at our service office
from an online remote control. For small and isolated
terminals, on-line control might be the right choice.

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TABLE 1. D ATA

The VRU was ordered:

03.07.97

Commissioning completed:

01.07.98

1-hour capacity:

900 m3/h

8-hour capacity:

7200 m3/8h

Vapour growth during loading:

15%

Inlet concentration normal:

30% HC

Inlet concentration max:

55% HC

RVP in gasoline summer:

70 kPa(a).

RVP in gasoline winter:

90 kPa(a).

Max pressure loss through the plant:

2 kPa.

Power consumption at max. load:

160 kWh

Power consumption per litre recovered:

0.2 kWh

Guaranteed outlet max. benzene:

<5 mg/m3

Guaranteed outlet HC:

150 mg/m3

inlet). CSA has however used a technique where the

blower operates outside the explosive range. The
blower is controlled via a pressure transmitter situated
in the vapour collection line upstream the VRU. The
transmitter ensures that a certain low overpressure is
kept constant in the compartments during the loading.
Obviously vapour recovery from the ship is most
effective when all other openings to the hold are
kept closed. However on some ships the manholes must
be open during loading, even in these cases it is still
possible to recover most of the vapour by ensuring that
the vapour flow drawn off by the vapour collection
system is not less than the flow of loaded product. This
principle is equivalent to the so called Active Stage
II System installed at service stations for vapour
balancing from automobiles to the underground
storage tanks.

CONCLUSION
This VRU at the Shell marine loading terminal at
Fredericia shows, that even when the requirements
for air purification demand an efficiency of not less than
99,999%, which at first sight seems like an impossible dream, it is quite easy to obtain with a one stage
CVA unit. This plant demonstrates that even if some ships
have seriously under-designed vapour collection systems,
it is possible with a fan to recover the vapour and still
keep the pressure in the ship within the required limits.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anker Jarl Jacobsen is Managing Director of Cool Sorption A/S.

SCOPE OF SUPPLY

He has a MSc in chemical engineering from the Technical

CSA manufacture in accordance with all types of national

and international standards; the German TRbF requirements
and the American ASME standard to name only two. Shell
required the Fredericia plant to meet a technical standard
largely based on the Shell DEP refinery standard. After
receiving the order, CSA made a suggestion for a design
and choice of components, and the drawings and lists were
forwarded to the refinery for comments and approval. After
some minor revisions the plant was built. Shell was
informed when the skid mounted unit was ready for final
inspection prior to transportation to site. The client was
also invited to inspect the major components under fabrication. When the plant arrived on site, CSA engineers checked
the deliveries and supervised erection of the unit.
CSAs commissioning engineers went to the site for start
up after Shell had completed the connections with
vapour, gasoline and electricity. The first part of the
start up consists of loop and alarm tests, thereafter the
pumps are run up one at a time. When everything is running
to satisfaction the carbon beds are saturated under a nitrogen
purge which inert the system and in addition help to removed
the heat generated during adsorption. Our commissioning team stay until the unit has operated normally for
at least 24 hours and a detailed instruction and training
of the local staff had taken place and the client has
accepted responsibility for the operation of the unit.

University of Denmark. From 1979 to 1982 he was

responsible for R&D in the company Flkt in the area of general
air pollution control. In 1982 he founded Cool Sorption A/S
based on the invention of the Cold Liquid Adsorbtion Vapour
Recovery process. Today Cool Sorption are specialists in all kinds
of commercial vapour recovery as well as providing consulting
services for oil companies regarding vapour recovery. In 1995
Anker Jarl Jackobsen was appointed Honourable Consul for
Ukraine in Denmark.

IF YOU HAVE ANY ENQUIRIES REGARDING THE

CONTENT OF THIS ARICLE , PLEASE CONTACT:
Anker Jarl Jacobsen
Cool Sorption A/S
Ejby Mosevej 5
DK-2600 Glostrup
Denmark
Tel: +45 4345 4745

PRESSURE LOSS CONTROL

Fax: +45 4343 0090

Since not all ships are able to supply vapour to the VRU
with a sufficient pressure to overcome the little resistance of the flame arresters and recovery plant, CSA
has installed a vapour moving device at the Fredericia
plant. Devices like this are often installed in such a way
that they operate within the explosive range (vapour

E-mail: csa@coolsorption.com

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Web site: www.coolsorption.com