Featuring OMNTEC CEO, Tom D' Alessandro

 We've got a treat for you. Tom D'Alessandro joins us from OMNTEC, an industry titan who gives us a riveting tour of the tank gauging world. From understanding how temperature, wind load, and fuel weight affect volume to the important role magneto-restrictive technology plays in achieving accuracy and repeatability, Tom opens a new vista into the dynamics of tank monitoring systems.

 Tom guides us through how tank size and roof movement influence the use of rigid solutions and the growing trend toward flexible magneto-restrictive probes. He discusses large fuel tanks and their unique challenges, such as calculating max fill heights, finding adequate sensing points, and the importance of solutions that don't require the tanks to be taken out of service.

Tom highlights the advantages of magneto-restrictive probing over the competition, its applications in various industries, and the simplicity of its installation and maintenance. This conversation promises to enlighten and engage you about tank gauging.

Additional Resources:
Omntec Website
Omntec LinkedIn
Omntec Free Training Link

 This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal or regulatory advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may occur from using this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional regulatory or legal advice, and the views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host, which would be me or Integrity Environmental. Thank you very much for listening. We would be happy to provide professional regulatory advice as part of our consulting services if you need professional regulatory advice. 

Transcript

Shannon: 0:43

Welcome to Tank Talk Today. I am very excited to have Tom D'Alessandro here with OMNTEC , and he is going to help us discuss and talk about tank gauging, which is something that's really important to bulk fuels. Knowing how much product you have is critical to every function of a bulk fuel facility. Tom has agreed to talk to us today about tank gauging and some things we should consider when picking tank gauges, and also aboutways to ensure that the tank gauging the things that we should consider when picking tank gauges, and also talking about ways to ensure that the tank gauging that we're doing is accurate. So I'm really excited. Welcome, tom.

Tom: 1:20

Good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Shannon: 1:23

Yeah, tom is the president and owner. He has many business interests but we've interacted with Tom most frequently with for above ground fuel tank gauging and also with their sister business, vaporless, which is a UST line leak detection service. Tom, you know a little bit about tank gauging. Would you mind walking us through like why, as an industry, we measure fuel volume?

Tom: 1:51

Well, first of all, it's an asset. There's a value to that asset and, from a tank gauging perspective, we measure physical liquid assets, Just like when you get a bank account statement you know how much money you have in the bank. We try and help people understand how much money they have invested in their physical asset by measuring the volume whether that be in barrels, gallons, liters we measure the volume. It helps clients also perform reconciliation, so they can monitor what leaves the tank versus what's sold and what enters the tank versus what's delivered into the tank.

Shannon: 2:38

Yes, we see a lot of that in Alaska. As you know, we have barge deliveries, so our clients often get large amounts of fuel all at once. But some of our clients in southeast they do get frequent weekly barge deliveries and they're getting smaller amounts more frequently. So when we're measuring these assets and we're using tank gauging, I think a lot of people don't realize how difficult it is to accurately gauge fuel, or any liquid really, but fuel especially. Could you talk about some of the factors that affect fuel volume, because that's key to this gauging discussion? We have to understand how fuel volume works to understand how gauging works.

Tom: 3:19

Absolutely so. Fuel volume, relative to just the physical properties of fuel. Temperature plays a very large role in fuel because temperature will either expand or contract the fuel, which now increases or decreases the volume. It's important to understand what the temperature is as you're measuring the volume in the vessel. So that's just the physical property. So in a typical above ground storage tank you are exposed to the elements, so the outside of the tank is exposed to the elements. You would have a typically a steel vessel that conducts heat and cold temperature very, very quickly. If you can imagine a cold morning, your tank is going to contract Now during the day and the temperature starts to rise, the actual metal vessel will grow. So now, if your conventional tank gauge would look at a top down measurement, the top of the tank is now moving. It's moving higher in the heat and lower in the cold.

Shannon: 4:28

The actual roof of the tank is changing in reference to the surface of the liquid, based on the heat of the actual physical tank.

Tom: 4:36

Interesting, correct. And then you also have your dynamic of wind load. So on these large above ground storage tanks, your roof may buckle. I'm sure you've been on many Shannon, so you know what I'm talking about. Just by stepping across top of them, sometimes you feel like you're going to drop into the tank.

Shannon: 4:56

And just to clarify for those of you who have not been on a tank before the top of the tank is typically a large welded steel sheet of multiple plates and when you walk on it it can deflect by many inches and if you're not expecting it it feels like you're about to fall to your death, but it really just buckles down. Maybe two inches max deflection, but yes, I can see that if your gauge was mounted on the sheet that you were standing on and it just dropped an inch, that would really affect the accuracy of the gauge there.

Tom: 5:24

Yeah, so especially if you use in the top reference technique, so meaning you're using the top of the tank as your basis of measurement and reflecting off the bottom. Or even if you had a float and take gauge, you're still you're, you're measuring from the top of that tank down.

Shannon: 5:45

Sometimes we see it when one tank gaiger is significantly heavier than another, you'll see that their measurements are always like three quarters of an inch different from the little guy because he's pushing the tank down. But, yes, when you, when you have a, what is it top of gauge reference, right, like the gauge well is at like 48 inches or something, and there's there's corrections that they do for that. So, yes, from anything from the top down, from manual all the way to automatic gauging.

Tom: 6:14

Yeah, and then there are certain, certain methodologies that you might, such as pressure. If you look, looking at just bottom reference pressure, basically measuring the weight of the fuel on top of the pressure gauge. There's issues of atmospheric pressure causing errors associated with that.

Shannon: 6:32

I would imagine that the tank floor buckles as well when the weight of the fuel is less. It probably pops up when you go below so many inches or so many feet.

Tom: 6:42

It does, except that that's a little bit more structurally structurally sound, I believe than the top.

Shannon: 6:48

You would think so, Tom, but I have seen some funky tanks in my life, but I think especially the really large diameter tanks. There's definitely room for deflection or buckling across that sheet.

Tom: 7:01

Yeah.

Shannon: 7:01

Anything over 140 feet. We see weird stuff start showing up.

Tom: 7:04

So that's the dynamics of the structure itself poses a challenge in in tank gaging as well. So, understanding that most tank monitoring systems, most gsystems gsystems systems systems, measure distance, they don't necessarily measure volume. So what we're doing is we're measuring distance very, very . With our technology's it's it's used in the machining industry Super high accuracy is achieved. Repeatability, which is just as important. Repeatability is basically can the measurement be repeated at the same point in the vessel time and time again as it passes through the vessel, the movement of that product. What does that do? That tells us, if we do not enter in from a programming perspective, enter in what is the height to gallons conversion. If we don't enter that improperly, then garbage in, garbage out.

Shannon: 8:09

And what Tom's referring to is when mini gaging systems, but on-tech, in particular, when you're setting up the system, you're entering the image table, or that sometimes is called the strapping chart, and that's a very accurate measurement of the tank volume at specific increments, usually eighth inch I've seen some tanks less than that. What you're doing is entering in those volumes as you go up the tank and the more accurate you have the, the image table or the the strapping chart, the more accurate your gauge will be at converting the distance it measures into gallons. Is that correct, tom?

Tom: 8:46

Yes, yes and then and then also, obviously, the same device should, should, measure temperatures so that we can compensate the volume that's measured at that height, compensate that to 60 degrees, which is the industry standard for net calculations of temperature.

Shannon: 9:09

It's called the API temperature conversion. That makes sure that we're selling Apples to apples, because if you sell fuel in the morning when it's cold, it'll be a smaller volume, and if you sell it in later in the day, it'll be a larger volume. And so all I Do want to state this, because I still see these errors being made sometimes, tom is that you have to temperature correct because Otherwise your your accounting will be poor. You need to make sure that everything is corrected back to that 60 degrees and your gauges do it automatically correct correct.

Shannon: 9:41

And they have a temperature probe in the gauge, don't they?

Tom: 9:43

at well, I think, multiple temperature probe five points in the in the liquid or in the vest.

Shannon: 9:50

Could you talk a little bit about the liquid of the fuel? Because you taught me this, I always sort of assumed that the fuel would be the same temperature throughout its entire volume, but that is not true. You want to talk about that?

Tom: 10:03

Sure, what we call a temperature stratification. In above ground storage tanks it's, it's gonna be more subject to the size of the tank than it would be an underground storage tanks, because they're You're, you have a natural insulator of the earth with respect to undergrounds. But but specifically talking about above grounds, you'll have again layers, just like in your house. You'll have layers of temperature, of the air. That's why you put fans on, to blow the to to, to move the air around so that the heat doesn't stay At the ceiling level, right, so you're pushing it back down so that it circulates and it gets to where it needs to be. Yes, with that, that happens in a tank as well. The temperature stratifies, the hotter fuel will rise to the surface. Again, having the dynamics of the sides of the tank as well, unlike an Underground storage tank, that measurement becomes unpredictable.

Shannon: 10:59

Yes, and we definitely see that where we have there's definitely more sunshine on one face of a tank than another, or when we were looking at a tank farm with multiple tanks.

Tom: 11:11

Some tanks will shade other tanks and they actually have less temperature differential than the one that's on the outside facing the Sun and that affects the stratification, so that that's going to move that product around, it's gonna, it's, it's, it'll eventually, you know, probably aggregate out. But but I would say measuring temperature is always a good thing. Again to get that 60 degree net calculation. One and Two, if you can think of a forensics like, almost from a forensics perspective, you can say hey, what, what happened to that fuel? I'm missing X volume of fuel.

Shannon: 11:50

You can look at your temperature calculations and and sometimes Be able to determine what the cause and effect was when we do air permitting Tom, a lot of times we have to look at throughput volumes in a system, and you know temperature correction of the fuel plays a really critical role in that we work with facilities, with a Whole bunch of different facility components.

Shannon: 12:15

They're not necessarily very modern, and so Temperature correction can be part of a gaging system, but some of our really older systems they have, like the temperature probe that is stuck into the tank, or Some of our guys will have a manual temperature that they lower into the tank, take the temperature Submerged in the fuel, pull it up and then take a fuel you know a fuel height sample All of that together to go ahead and get you the temperature correction. That's not nearly as accurate as if you've got a probe submerged in the fuel and it's been submerged there for a long time and it's got a good temperature reading in it. We also see problems with the temperature correcting meters. A lot of people don't have temperature correcting meters and so they're metering at ambient air temperature and if that temperature is not logged Then your your fuel dispensing volumes get kind of knocked out a whack.

Shannon: 13:09

Fortunately for Alaska we don't see relatively high temperature swings for most of the year. There's a few exceptions, like the interior where it could. I've literally been at a facility where it was minus 31 when I showed up and it was 23 degrees when I left. My nose hurt from the the change in the temperature. But we also see to some of these, some of these locations on the coast they really don't go below 45 and they don't really go over 65, and so I think for many years it it was an acceptable tolerance. But I think with modern fuel prices and modern dispensing or sorry and with modern regulatory requirements, I think accuracy is becoming a lot more important. What you could get away with in the 70s Is it going to cut it anymore with fuel at the current rate per gallon that it is. It's pretty expensive to make a mistake of even a few thousand gallons.

Tom: 14:10

Absolutely yeah. That's why measuring physical assets is so so critically important to uh, to businesses.

Shannon: 14:18

What we see is an increased profitability for facilities that make the decision to invest in more accurate gauging and more accurate metering, because, as soon as they take the human calculation error out and introduce more data points, they're able to predict and measure more accurately, and all that adds up to more profitability.

Tom: 14:36

Absolutely, because I, you're, you're identifying loss points Again, you having the data, just like in any business, right? You're nothing without the data necessary to make decision. The more data you present someone, the more accurate data you present someone, the more refined those decisions will be, the higher your risk mitigation capabilities are.

Shannon: 14:58

Yep, yep. The more accurate you're gauging, the lower your risk. Always, those two go hand in hand. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between gauging a horizontal cylinder versus a vertical cylinder? Most of our clients have at least one of those two and many of them have both, and they are different kinds of Volume calculations. Could you talk a little bit about the difference between those two?

Tom: 15:22

typically your Larger above-ground storage tanks, vertical storage tanks, will require flexible magnetostrictive probes any any of them that are above, say, 25 feet or so your ability to install a rigid solution Stucks to become, or more difficult. Let's say so. We we have. We employ flexible magnetostrictives, both top mount and bottom mount. Our bottom mount is much more popular in those applications because of the roof movement and things of that nature. So typically you don't have to worry about that as much in your horizontal tanks because the diameters are smaller so you can fit a rigid, rigid probe there. I think the largest, largest cylindrical horizontal tank that I've ever We've ever monitored, I believe was 12 feet and that's rare.

Shannon: 16:19

We have one horizontal rectangular tank In a very remote location at an airport that is 16 feet in height, but that's as that's as big as I've seen on a horizontal. They usually top out at 12 and then they just start getting longer.

Tom: 16:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what we find. The thing that you might have to worry about is a little bit tank deflection. They're much easier to monitor than the larger above-ground storage tanks much more economical to monitor as well.

Shannon: 16:48

Yep, and one thing that I would like to point out for our listeners that are maybe a little newer to fuels horizontal tanks. Because they are horizontal and they're a cylinder on its side as they start to fill up and reach their maximum fill height, they fill up quicker because the level rises faster, because there's less volume at the top of that cylinder, whereas a vertical tank can have a steady fill rate because it's just going up in height, it's not necessarily changing the diameter at the same time, and so we definitely see that with some of our when we're doing training and we're talking about best management practices. You have to gauge a horizontal tank more frequently if you're performing hand gauging at the very end, much more frequently than you would. Everyone should. Let me clarify Everyone should gauge more frequently at the end of a transfer because that's the highest risk of overfill. But the rate tends to speed up on those horizontal tanks much faster than it does in the verticals, and so you need to be prepared for that if you're responsible for monitoring that transfer.

Tom: 17:55

Yeah, Shannon, that's a good point because, if you think about it, because it's increasing faster. Sometimes people think along the lines of I have a hundred inch diameter tank at 90%, which is typically where you're going to have your overfill alarm, that's 90 inches. No, it's not. No, you have to look at percent volume. So if you have a thousand gallon tank, you need to get that high level alarm point has to be at 900 gallons.

Shannon: 18:26

We see a lot of errors in max fill height. That's one of the things Our company also does tank inspections and the max fill height is very often miscalculated on both horizontals and verticals. If it's a vertical tank that was constructed in the modern era and they got an image chart or a strapping chart created for it, it's not necessarily a problem. But a lot of people purchase a horizontal tank from someone else and put it into service. They sort of DIY their own safe fill heights. You're right, they very often make mistakes in the calculations of it, which is why I think getting gauges and setting 90% heights are important. But I think it's also helpful. I know your company is really helpful at making sure people understand those pieces of it. We always encourage them to talk to their distributor, talk to the manufacturer, because there's a load of information you guys can share and help make sure that those things don't get miscalculated or don't get misunderstood.

Shannon: 19:23

Shifting gears a little bit. I do want to talk about accuracy at very large levels, because in Alaska and in the West Coast in general we tend to store larger volumes of fuel. Those larger tanks have some specific difficulties with accuracy that we run into all the time. Do you want to talk about what makes larger volumes harder to measure? Let's say anything over 500,000 gallons in size.

Tom: 19:50

If you think about it, we can achieve accuracies of up to 1,000 of an inch. The larger the tank, the more volume that represents. A 1,000 of an inch in a very small vessel, volume-wise, is much, much less than in a 500,000-gallon vessel. The diameters are typically much greater and the dynamics of the vessel, as we discussed before, become more challenging because of the larger roofs, whether it's an internal floating roof or an external floating roof. What physical openings do you have in the vessel to put these sensing technologies in? The challenges our customers face are finding the adequate openings in these large above-ground vessels to put an instrument in.

Shannon: 20:43

So that's a very good point. Some gauging solutions require you to take the tank down and you have to actually clean it and prepare it and be able to weld installation points and create openings of a very specific size. I feel like Tom on tech all of your products can be installed without taking the tank down, though, correct?

Tom: 21:03

All of our solution can be installed while the tank is in service. We have the product selections so that they can choose what size opening to put the product in.

Shannon: 21:15

That would be pretty valuable because I think we're running about $100,000 to take a tank down. So if a product can be installed without having to take it down and attach, for a lot of our clients that's going to be a good idea.

Tom: 21:30

We have two-inch opening solutions all the way up to six-inch opening solutions, and if there's a man-way riser that's available, a lot of clients don't realize they can take that man-way down and modify the lid to repurpose it for tank gauges as well. But two-inch openings is typically what we're going to look at, at a minimum.

Shannon: 21:57

And I'm just going to do a public service announcement for anyone listening that just got the bright idea of putting a gauge through their man-way. That's absolutely amazing. Do it, but make sure it's not your emergency vent. Also, because we have recently run into quite a few gauge installations that are also installed through the emergency vent, and emergency venting will not work with a gauge installed in it. It won't pop up and release the way it's supposed to. So absolutely use a man-way if you can, but double-check and make sure it's not also acting as the emergency vent for your large tank.

Shannon: 22:32

Just to reiterate what Tom is saying is that when a tank volume is really really large, you can get a very accurate measurement. But there's a lot of factors that can cause the volume of the fuel to be different, and we talked about those already. But if you're off by a thousandth of an inch in a 500,000-gallon tank, that volume is much, much larger than it would be in a much smaller tank, and so it's very easy to have very minor fluctuations in fuel end up being what seem to be pretty large discrepancies in volume. I know a lot of and maybe you could talk about this. I know some of our gauging, some of the gauging technologies will show you not necessarily averages, but you can see the volume over time. Is that correct?

Tom: 23:20

Sure, yes, you can get historical volumes over time, especially with now with a lot of the clouds Without surfaces out there. You can actually pull up your tank and look at historical data for years back. That small effect meaning over a large surface, regardless of the size of the tank, if the temperature increases, that level is going to rise the same amount whether it's a small vessel or a large vessel. That will also skew your tank age accuracy, Because temperature in a 500,000 gallon tank is much more pronounced than it is in a much smaller vessel.

Shannon: 24:03

So a minor increase in temperature can create a much bigger difference in volume measurement over a relatively quick period of time, correct, gotcha? Did you want to talk about volumetric leak detection a little bit and how we can use leak gauging to not only measure what fuel we have but to identify losses of fuel?

Tom: 24:29

Understanding that we have five temperatures along the shaft of the probe which spans the depth of the tank, knowing that we only take the wetted portion of the probe, meaning whatever temperature sensors are below the surface of the liquid.

Tom: 24:45

We're now measuring the temperature and we're measuring the height and we do a height to volume conversion based on the geometry that is entered in. Using the strapping chart we're able to take that gross height measurement and compensate to 60 degrees net so that we're creating a static volumetric leak detection. Start point by marking time and then over. For underground storage tanks it's four hours of test time, quiet time. We are then able to measure the end time after four hours and take that same net calculation, subtract it and determine what kind of loss the tank gauge determined, and you can use that relative to a larger above ground storage tanks. So you'll get the , and in the larger vessels customers are using those to say what is my relative loss? , i underground it's EPA regulated. So the EPA actually has a national work group listing what they call EPA protocol, but there's a national work group c N . You can find approved vendors for tank aging and leak detection.

Shannon: 26:04

But that's just for underground tanks and we run into this sometime where regulators want us to have above ground tanks with that NWGDE. I think is that the last one E.

Tom: 26:17

A NWGLDE National Work Group listing for leak detection.

Shannon: 26:22

We do have regulators sometimes that ask us to show that gauges meet that requirement for above ground tanks. Typically that's not applied to an above ground system because of the temperature changes right, the above ground tanks have such more frequent temperature changes. Getting a tank to be the exact same temperature for four hours is pretty difficult.

Tom: 26:41

Yes, that's why they don't have that protocol for above ground storage tanks. You know, if you can picture an underground storage tank, it's kind of like a nice neat little compartment right. The fittings are typically coming out the top. It's buried in the earth, the insulation of the earth. It's a nice contained experiment there, right.

Shannon: 27:03

It's like an island in biology. I'm a biologist by trade and biologists love islands because there's edges, it's isolated, yep.

Tom: 27:12

And in the above ground world, there are infinite options with respect to, again, internal floating roof, external floating roof, fixed top roofs.

Shannon: 27:23

Hype diameter, foundation type, sun exposure ecosystem yeah, they could have wind cooling them off.

Tom: 27:31

The diameter span from anywhere from 10 feet in diameter all the way to 100 feet in diameter. Right.

Shannon: 27:40

I think our biggest is 185 so far that we've worked on. It had a lot of four feet.

Tom: 27:46

So the dynamics there are much, much, much more challenging. But, just like anything else, if you can create a basis and you can monitor that and you have the forensics capabilities, say OK, what was my start volume, what was my end volume, what was my start temperature, my end temperature, my start height, my end height, all of those things you can kind of back into and say OK, I could see why the results show what they show.

Shannon: 28:14

Yeah, it's more data that's collected, that it gives you more options for understanding what's happening in your tank system. Correct, correct. Automatic tank gauging has gone through some significant growth since I entered the industry, and you entered the industry a little before me, tom. So we still see tanks with the original Shandonger's automatic tank gauge, which is a float and tape system. I'm curious when did you enter the industry? Where was tank gauging at when young Tom D'Alessandro was starting to think about tank gauges?

Tom: 28:50

1987.

Shannon: 28:52

So before computerized gauging, I'm guessing.

Tom: 28:55

I started back in 1987. Back then the mainstay was actually capacitance probes, where you were measuring the capacitance of the liquid, the dielectric of the liquid, and then became a point where paraffin started growing on the capacitance probe, affecting the dielectric measurement. A very interesting thing they used to do is take the, which typically happened in diesel tanks. They'd take the diesel probe out and if there happened to be a gasoline probe of the same size vessel, they would take the diesel probe, put it in the gasoline probe would kill the paraffin work. Perfectly fine, take the diesel probe and put it in the gasoline.

Shannon: 29:41

Encycle through for infinity. Let the gasoline do the cleaning. Huh, ok.

Tom: 29:46

On the smaller vessels. They went to Magneto-Strictive Technology.

Shannon: 29:50

So I've never actually heard of that probing system, so I'm super curious about that now. Could you briefly describe how that technology works?

Tom: 29:59

I liken it to guitar playing, a guitar right. So one would put their finger on the guitar at the top of the at the top of the guitar and pluck the guitar string towards the bottom and basically that plucking free to sound wave that vibrates up the string to your finger. That's pressing down on the spring and then back down. So Magneto-Strictive works very similarly to that, in that we have an electronic head and a Magneto-Strictive wire that goes down the entire shaft of the probe and that would be like your guitar string, right, we pluck the string at the top so we send an electronic sound wave down the Magneto-Strictive wire. Magneto-strictive wire is called Magneto-Strictive because it is sensitive to magnetic fields. So now the float that floats on the liquid magnetic ring inside of it. It creates a torsional twist on the Magneto-Strictive wire, which is like that other finger that I told you up on the top. We're plucking it from the head, we're sending that Magneto, that sound wave down the Magneto-Strictive wire. It reflects off the torsional twist and comes back.

Tom: 31:21

Super high accuracy measurement and it's very, very repeatable. It's truly been the mainstay since the early 90s till now with regard to rock solid accuracy, repeatability and it's taken over the industry by storm. Over those times it's only gotten better. So how do we know it's accurate? Well, in the machining industry it's been used for many years, decades, and it actually migrated from machining over to tank aging. So military mechanical parts that come off machines that are super high accuracy are made and measured by these Magneto-Strictive solutions, and it just migrated its way over to fueling.

Shannon: 32:12

I know we like them for the ease of installation and we also like that. They are rock solid. Like you said, they just work and keep working and they don't require a whole lot of maintenance. It's mostly a visual inspection to make sure the float is where it's supposed to be. I think the only other thing we've done is sometimes, when we take tanks down to inspect them, we reposition the magnet on the bottom that holds the bottom of the probe to the bottom of the tank.

Tom: 32:38

It's important to note also that with Magneto-Strictive you can have two float mechanisms on the same shaft of the probe, so you can monitor water simultaneously while you're monitoring the fuel level.

Shannon: 32:51

Yes, although in the bigger tanks it's a little more difficult because the water volumes are low, so the volume is pretty close to the actual bottom of the tank and, depending on the tank floor construction, sometimes we can't get the gaging installed where the sump would be also, so that actually is a good segue, because I had to learn the difference between a probe and a sensor and those have two different definitions and I think primarily stemming from the underground storage tank world, like probe and sensor have very specific meetings and USTs, but that's carried over into ASTs. Could you talk a little bit about the difference between the two and what they do?

Tom: 33:36

Sure, so a probe we would typically call a probe, an inventory probe. So we're measuring inventory, we're measuring the movement, so it's not so much so a set point sensor.

Shannon: 33:53

It's a gauge, it's measuring, and that measurement is changing all the time.

Tom: 33:58

Correct and we're measuring multiple things at the same time. So we're measuring level, Temperature. Typically, in a sensor you're not getting more than one. Typically it's a set point. So is there something present? Is there not something present?

Shannon: 34:13

It's a go-no-go right. It's like a yeah.

Tom: 34:16

Correct. So for leak sensors, there are optical leak sensors, there are float sensors. We typically go with optical sensors because optical sensors are constantly checking themselves, it's self-diagnostic, they're not position sensitive, they could be upside down and they'll still work. So we like that technology. And then there's also conductivity, which allows you to tell the difference between a liquid that's present being water versus being fuel. So we call those discriminating sensors.

Shannon: 34:53

Yes, and we see a lot of sensors in interstitial spaces on double walled tanks and we also see sensors in leak detection outfall systems for tanks that have foundations with leak detection portals or ports.

Shannon: 35:10

We see we use them quite a bit to insert and we really like the discriminating factor because most interstitial spaces in Alaska, because of the humidity of our ecosystems, they are wet constantly because of condensation running down the inside and so being able to tell if it's water or fuel is critically important, big difference. And then I just wanted to touch on sensors. There's other sensors that you mentioned that are mechanical and they float. That would be like a high level alarm that is pushed up by the level of the fuel and overflow prevention valve could be seen as something like that. Or it triggers a sensor that hits an alarm right or shuts off, you know, kills the pump, something like that. We also see interstitial floats in double wall tanks where there's like a mechanical float arm in the interstitial area and then there's like the little turkey timer top to it where the little red you've got a problem flag will pop up into the sight glass and we see all of them. But for the electronic sensors they do have to have a display to go back to correct.

Tom: 36:18

Yes, we do sell some products that are black box, but they're typically sent over to a cloud service or sending out texts or things of that nature. So I mean you talk about the evolution of tank aging. It's gone from you have to go and look and maybe print something out to determine whether or not Anything had occurred, to getting texts and emails now to getting alerts on an app automatically, real time. So there's been a tremendous evolution of electronics and with that evolution of electronics naturally migrates to industries such as ours. Obsolescence is a bad thing sometimes, but in other instances it's a blessing because you're able to further improve and further notify and the data logging is tremendous so that historically you can go back and take a look at certain things that might've led to an event that had occurred.

Shannon: 37:28

Yep, we also can use that data logging to help our company does a lot of compliance response. So say, a facility gets investigated as part of normal routine investigation by a federal agent and they have questions about certain things like how long was this condition apparent or how long did this condition occur? Sometimes we can use some of the data that comes in from these tank gauges or sensors to be able to refute that and say, look, we had this data for this many days. It dropped off two days before your agent showed up. Therefore, this was only around for a couple of days, which is why it wasn't noticed. For these specific sensors that can discriminate or distinguish between liquids, I get asked all the time how does it know it's fuel? Is it magic? Please tell me it's magic, tom.

Tom: 38:22

It's magic. Yes, I knew it. So I'll start with we do have non-discriminating sensors. I'll explain that, and then I'll explain the component that we add to that.

Shannon: 38:33

Okay.

Tom: 38:34

Our non-discriminating sensors. They're optical, so we use a normally closed beam of light in a prism and we use the physical properties of refraction to detect that liquid. Any liquid will refract light, so we use a normally closed beam of light. The opening of that beam, the refraction of the light, will cause our sensor to report an alarm back to the console. So now that's how we detect liquid. Now, hydrocarbons are relatively non-conductive and so they do not conduct electricity. Water will allow an electrical current to flow through it unless it's de-ionized, which that's not what occurs naturally.

Shannon: 39:23

No, especially if it runs down the side of a steel tank. It's very ionized at the end.

Tom: 39:29

Yes, yes, so we detect the difference between hydrocarbon and water by basically knowing there's a liquid and knowing that that liquid is non-conductive.

Shannon: 39:42

So you add the conductivity test to that sensor and that allows you to discriminate.

Tom: 39:47

Correct.

Shannon: 39:48

So physics and magic sometimes I think they're the same. All right, thank you, because we do get that question a lot, and so I I'd like to add something to that.

Tom: 39:59

Yeah, please. And the reason why we set our eyes upon optics and we use that as our pretty much our de facto methodology for detecting liquids is that it is constantly testing itself 24-7, because if that normally closed beam of light is interrupted by anything a disconnection of wire, obviously a liquid it's going to report back to the console that there's an issue. The fact that we're testing our sensors 24-7 is important, or any technology If you can choose one that it's constantly checking itself, it's the best technology to go with, so that you don't have to physically go out and turn that float upside down to make sure that it's going to be operational.

Shannon: 40:47

As someone who has physically tested many float gauges, I appreciate that approach. It's a lot of work to be able to unbutton everything and test it and then put it all back in place. Another common question I get in the field, tom, that maybe you can help us with is what can people do to prolong the life of their gauging system and, conversely, what things do people do that shorten the life of their gauging systems? And you can include sensor probes too, because a lot of our systems that utilize your gauging also have a sensor component as well.

Tom: 41:21

Sure, the number one thing is install it properly. I mean leak sensors. Leak sensors are meant to be installed in places where liquid would normally not be present. Take a precaution to make sure that those entry points are dry, or watertight, I should say.

Shannon: 41:43

Or that you're drawing the water down regularly enough that they actually get a chance to breathe and be dry.

Tom: 41:49

Yes, that's important. So, reacting, reacting promptly to what the console is telling you. You have water in your piping sump or you have water in your interstitial yes, you have to react quickly to make sure that gets removed. Our leak sensors are now stainless steel, so everyone that goes out is stainless steel for the full spot. And tanks, leak detection. Ports on above ground storage tanks. There'll be three, three, sixteen, epoxy sealed, so they're robust. It's just, you know, making sure that your conduits are waterproof conduits, making sure that the integrity of splices are there If there is a manhole that these sensors are under. Making sure that the integrity of the gasketing is maintained. I've seen customers put mats over there, over their manholes, so that any rain that comes down will just wash off of the mats. So there are a lot of precautions that could be made.

Shannon: 42:54

Could I ask you about one more and your Liz, who I love, your engineer, liz Montellion. I do love her, she's so smart. One thing she helped us with and this might be more geared towards Alaska A lot of our smaller communities have really irregular power sources. The utilities that provide power sometimes are in the process of upgrading equipment and so they have poor performance sometimes and you get lots of variation in the power grid, lots of surges, and so Liz was really helpful in getting us a system that had surge protection built into it, because all of these probes and gauges feed back to your display box Right, and that display box you can either access it right there at the tank or it'll like Wi-Fi down to the office, you know, and you can have an office display as well. But yeah, I think just maybe this is just specific to Alaska, but I do believe putting a surge protector in or having that be part of the system will help make your gauging system last longer, because it's protecting the brains of the operation.

Tom: 44:00

Yes, yes, the best is a UPS. A UPS will actually isolate the power grid from the console through batteries. So a UPS will take the 120 that comes in from the power grid, it'll convert it over to battery and then the battery will then convert it back into 120VAC. So there's a natural barrier there. So UPS is always the best. I will say that we've designed our power supplies around the power grids in India, which are terrible, really bad, but it made us better. So we have thousands of systems there and it just made us better over the years. We're on our third generation tank age now and our power supplies just gotten better and better and better. But nothing like a UPS.

Shannon: 45:00

Yeah, no, we really appreciate it, and some of our clients also have fairly frequent power outages and so they're going back and forth between generator power and system power, and the UPS system also does really well handling the fluctuations between the two.

Tom: 45:19

Yeah, the battery backstops the power grid during the transit.

Shannon: 45:24

Yes, yeah, and I think the last one we installed from you guys, I think it went beyond 24 hours. I was just impressed. It was robust, but more than I was expecting, which is good.

Tom: 45:39

That's what we aim for.

Shannon: 45:40

Yes, all right. So our company works pretty hard to be knowledgeable about the systems we're working with and you know that We've worked with OnTec. You guys have a really great support training program that we love and all of my field employees take it so that they understand not only the basics of gauging, which that training covers, but it also covers, like the specifics for the OnTec installations which many of our clients have. Could you speak a little bit about your certified installer program, how it came to be, and is that something that you'd be willing to share with our listeners?

Tom: 46:13

If we look at our training program as being an extension of our team here, so it allows us to expand the knowledge base in the industry with respect to our products, so we don't charge for it because of that philosophy of the more people we have out there knowledgeable on the install and use of our products, the better off we'll be as a company and as an industry. I think so. So yeah, we would welcome your listeners to to look us up on LinkedIn. We do post those on LinkedIn schedules. Follow us at OnTeccom vaporlesscom.

Shannon: 46:54

I took it first because I had to as part of a UST installation. The UST requirements say you have to be a certified installer to do anything to that system, and so I took it. And then I was like this is really good, and so we started assigning it to our field staff and then now it's just part of our onboarding program because it is a really great overview of your system. But it's also an overview of how all tank gauging systems for the most part work and things you need to consider about how they're installed. And, as you know, we do inspections and plan and permit audits, and so we need to be able to accurately describe the gauges that and how they're tested right and maintained. But then we also need to be able to identify when something's wrong with them, to let the client know they've got to fix it or how to fix it, and so that training program does a pretty good overview of that.

Shannon: 47:43

I think if you have a on tech gauging system at your facility, you should absolutely take it. It'll help you troubleshoot almost everything. So, yeah, we'll link that in the show notes and I appreciate that, tom. It's very generous and I feel like I'm text a leader because of that because you guys make that available to everybody. So before we go today, do you have any fun facts about tank gauges and historical things? That would be interesting.

Tom: 48:06

I do have one instance that surprised me and still surprises me today. But I had a client it wasn't domestic, it was an international client and we were trying to win their business and we just couldn't reach the price point. So it was a country where it was lowest bidder. Specifications were very lax. I went in touting the durability of the product and how it could last 15 years and how we had clients in the country that we're using our product that have been using them for 15 years and haven't had to do anything with respect to not much with respect to maintaining our product. He asked me whether or not we could dumb it down a little bit so that it would only last five years, because that was depreciation.

Shannon: 48:56

So he wanted you to make it less robust and a cheaper price you wanted us to make it cheaper.

Tom: 49:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I said you know you get what you pay for. You know that. He said well, you know, our accountants tell us that we can buy a new one in five years. So that's good enough for us. We passed on that client.

Shannon: 49:14

That is not the right client. No, awesome. Well, tom, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for walking us through tank gauges and some of the challenges and the ways we've met that with gauging systems. Thanks for that little bit of history. I am absolutely going to look up capacitance probes after we're done with this today, because I'm super curious about those. Is there anything else you want to tell our listeners before we sign off for the day?

Tom: 49:43

Yes, our industry is growing. We have technological advances. That's been tremendous. We will be introducing a lot of products here in the near future with technological advantages that will allow us to follow that growth, that industry growth. We have developed an app so that tank owners can manage their facilities while they're managing other parts of their business and be able to react accordingly at their fingertips. They'll be able to share critical information with the people that they employ to take care of issues. They'll be notified of shortages before the shortages actually occur, because now they don't have to wait until they go home at night to check the internet or to call up or wait for a report to come in. They'll be notified as it happens.

Shannon: 50:37

Real-time data yeah.

Tom: 50:40

And we have that now. So it's exciting to me. The youth of now, younger people that gravitate towards that technology, are now attracted to our industry, whereas in the past they were not. It's been great, and I really look forward to a great future.

Shannon: 50:57

Yeah, we're looking forward to it too. I feel like I entered it at the. You know how there was the timeframe where we went from horse and carriages to motorized vehicles. I feel like I'm spanning that for the computerized age. Working with a bulk fuel farm used to be hand-done and manual, and now we're shifting it into this future that's computerized and digitized, and you and I were chatting before we started recording. The people who are entering the fuels industry are much younger, they play with apps much better than maybe you or I would, and they kind of expect that data to be there right, and when it's not, I've definitely seen people get frustrated with how old-fashioned some of these older systems are and that everything's in paper, and I do think that there's going to be a push as we get. We've definitely seen industry-wide a push for doing more with less people, and automating things like tank gauging really frees up time, and so I do think for this industry especially, the digitization is going to be able to translate to less people required to run a tank farm.

Tom: 52:00

Absolutely. You nail right on the head.

Shannon: 52:03

Well, thank you so much, Tom, I appreciate your time.