One of Aura’s main competencies is the design of railcar loading facilities. We recently wrapped up such a facility for a client in Ohio. We designed a sixteen (16) spot loading rack for propane, butane, and natural gasoline. The loading facility is designed to load railcars simultaneously while accurately measuring the loading rate to each individual railcar with a dedicated meter run. Each meter run is set up as a standard Lease Automated Custody Transfer (LACT) meter run. The LACT unit consists of a strainer, flow meter, pressure transmitter, RTD, double block and bleed valve with a prover connection on either side along with a flow and pressure controlling valve. The flow and pressure control valve is utilized to control the loading rate while maintaining a minimum back pressure on the flow meter. The designed loading rate for each railcar is 500 gallons per minute. The design allows each railcar to be loaded in approximately 60 minutes. The design of safe systems is always foremost in the minds of Aura’s design staff. Some of the protections that this system includes are: grounding verification and overfill protection at each railcar loading spot. Each loading spot is also equipped with a [...]

Additive injection systems are a very common piece of equipment at refined fuel loading terminals. Every fuel company, from Exxon to Chevron to Shell to Valero, has their own special additive for motor gasoline or diesel. Some are cleaning agents while others are high performance additives to help our vehicles operate at peak performance. Aura Engineering has designed several truck loading facilities that have incorporated an additive injection system at the loading rack. We were recently presented with a challenge by one of our customers to develop a mobile additive injection system. This customer is currently operating in a temporary mobile transloading phase while the terminal is under construction. The mobile transloaders are designed to transfer gasoline and diesel from railcars directly into trucks for distribution to gas stations. One of the client’s fuel customers is requiring additive injection for their product that will be loaded into the trucks. Due to the need for a mobile skid to move from railcar to railcar as each one is emptied, Aura was tasked with incorporating a mobile additive system into the existing mobile transloading operation. To meet the customer’s requirements, our engineers and contractors developed a plan to incorporate the mobile metering [...]