Case: Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, Kuwait

A one-of-a-kind LPG filling plant

Customer

The customer’s challenge

Our solution

The outcome

A rendering of a full sized filling plant

Scope of supply

• 2 x 72 stand FLEXSPEED filling lines
• 1 x 45 stand filling carrousel
• 6 x pallet plants
• Cap machine
• Cap shrinking machine
• Leak detection
• Weight adjustment
• Check weighing

Maintenance area:

Pad printing, tare weight marking, painting, washing, valve changing, shroud and foot ring straightening, valve screwing and greasing, testing date marking, thread cleaning, pressure testing, check weighing, valve seal detection.

Size does matter

An overview of a filling plant

Private Centre

In the other hall, called the 'Private Centre', there is traditional filling equipment for 1-2-3-5-12-20-25 kg cylinders. In Kuwait, there are a number of companies such as market gardens and supermarkets that own their own cylinders, so KOTC needs to be able to handle customised cylinders in relatively small quantities quickly and effectively. Customers usually arrive at the Private Centre with around 20 LPG cylinders, of which perhaps 10 have centre valves and 10 have screw valves. What is special about the Private Centre is that each customer almost always has to leave with the same mix of cylinders they came with. This is possible only because the cylinders are automatically delivered to a collection bay where they are sorted into the various categories. When the truck is empty, the driver or an operator orders matching cylinders. The service time from delivery of 20 empty cylinders to loading 20 filled cylinders is estimated to be around half an hour.

Custom-made equipment

The KOTC filling plant encompasses the latest technology and the finest equipment on the market today thanks to custom-built machines and equipment for the Kuwaiti plant. For instance, the outlet module is an efficient, innovative system that combines leak testing, inspection of the weld seam, cap application and cap shrinking in four swift, successive operations keeping speed a paramount factor. The combination of the four modules is unique to KOTC and the weld seam inspection machine is custom-built exclusively for KOTC. Also, a cap detection machine that checks the application of caps on the cylinders is another KOTC invention.

More is more

To illustrate the size of the complete KOTC facility, the site contains, besides the two filling facilities and maintenance areas, administrative buildings, a mosque, roofed parking area, a roofed storage tank yard and workshops. Furthermore, the gas is delivered directly from a refinery by tank trucks demanding extraordinarily large spaces for unloading the LPG.

Besides being one of the largest facilities in the world, the KOTC plant is a high capacity facility designed to function optimally in one of the hottest countries in the world, in the middle of the desert, where sandstorms are common - a fact that required skilled training of personnel, professional service and maintenance with which KC has great experience.

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