On-site Refilling Station is Profitable
Operating own on-site refilling station of fuels is an attractive challenge for a majority of fuel carriers and companies with a large fleet (cars, vans, lorries and trucks).
Everyone wants to fuel the low-cost diesel and thereby significantly decrease its operational costs and consequently strenghten its position on the market. On-site refilling station provides substantial savings in the fuel costs in comparison with the public refilling station. Lets examine pros and cons of the on-site refilling station in detail.
New techology of the plastic tanks ensuring better conditions of the storage and discharging of diesel at lower costs allows to advise the construction of the on-site station in the case of monthly consumption exceeding 8.000 litres. If your monthly consumption is lower than stated above, you better use the services of a public refilling station or find a suitable parnter who is already operating the on-site refilling station. That is - at "his place" you could fuel for lower prices.
The Tank is the Matter
Fuels are stored in a specially designed tanks; they are grouped according to the placement to the surface and underground tanks. There are several reasons for the fact that a vast majority of public refilling stations contains underground tanks. The tank stored underground keeps nearly constant product temperature of around 10 °C and the change of the product volume does not occur in the dependence on the ambient temperature. However, more important is the fact that the drop of the ambient temperature will not cause the dramatic and sudden cooling of the product in the underground tank and consequently to the separation of parafins from diesel and eventually to its solidification.
On the other hand, surface tanks installed readily at the on-site refilling stations are much cheaper variant. Their advantage is the sparing of the general site excavation and thereby lower costs of the building the refillng station. Moreover, the surface tank is easy to be dismantled and transported to the other location if necessary. The recent winner in the case of the on-site refilling are 5000 litres surface plastic tanks for diesel as their construction does not require the building permission. As a definition, this tank is not a construction but a mobile device composed of a tank, pump, hose with nozzle and takomat controlling the unattended discharge and evidence.
Both surface and the underground tanks are produced as double shell tanks to prevent the eventual release of the petroleum products into the sufrace waters. In fact, it is a tank with doubled wall, where the interspace is constantly monitored and the damage of one of the shells causes alarm.
The interesting option is the surface concrete tank shaped as the rectangular container. The big advantage of the concrete tank is their temperature stability and high temperature momentum allowing enough time to supplement the diesel with a suitable additive preventing the parafine separation and solidifying of the diesel inside the tank. Generally, this risk has to be taken into consideration and order the winter diesel much earlier than the first frost comes and surprise us.
High quality dispenser
Filling of the product from the tank to the vehicle container is ensured by the dispenser. Its main part consists of the electrical engine and dispensing monoblock with the indicator. The difference between the dispenser designed for the public refilling station and that one for the on-site refilling station lies in its size and price. Public refilling station usually contain large, often double-sided multiproduct dispensers (4-5 products) where as much smaller and cheaper dispensers designed for the dispensing of one, exceptionally of two, products. Majority of the on-site refilling stations is intended only for the storage and filling of the diesel and therefore small single hose dispenser is sufficient. However, the investment into the modern dispenser provided with the high quality hydraulics ensuring the long term reliability, even after having dispensed several million litres, will always pay off!
In case that your on-site refilling station is used exclusively for your own needs, you can get by with the indicator of the dispensed amount and the precision of the dispenser measurement does not have to be certified.
However, the majority of operators allows their contractual partners and customers to use the operator's on-site refilling stations. In this case, it becomes a public sale and therefore the dispenser must be fitted also with the indicator of the unit price and of the total price corresponding to the discharged amount. The dispenser destined for the public sale must be calibrated and its accuracy must be verified by the Czech Metrologic Institute every two years.
Tankomat replacing the attendant
The drivers vacated the dispenser themselves by the key and the noted down the reading on their display at the end of the month. By comparison of the current reading with the previous one a monthly consumption of each driver was determined. The disadvantage of these old dispensers was the high failure rate due to the complexity of the mechanism and to the fact that key losses were relatively frequent as was its breakage in the key drive. The modern solution is the tankomat.
Tankomat (OPT) is the electronic terminal inbuilt directly into the dispenser or standing right in its vicinity. The tankomat unblocks the filling from the dispenser on the basis of the driver identification by the electronic key or card and ensures the detailed evidence on any filling at the station. The evidence is composed of the date and time of the taking, name of the driver, vehicle registration number, discharged amount with the precision of the two decimal points of a litre, product ID and its unit price, tachograph entry and the STAZ code and eventually other data.
The tankomat supervises the authorized limits for each driver, maintains the infromation on the credit of the contractual customers and allows the preselection of the required amount for the subsequent fueling. At the end of the period it provides the fueling evidence sheets for each customer, evaluates the total consumption for the station and eventually the average fuel consumtion of vehicles. Actually, we cannot imagine modern on-site refilling station working without a tankomat nowadays!
No drop to loose
To build a on-site refilling station does not only mean to erect the technology on your yard, i.e. the tank, dispenser and Tankomat. Oils, petrols and diesel are the products that pollute the surface waters and therefore it is urgent to prevent their leakage and undeliberate release. The tank itself is the double surfaced and the direct leakage from the tank is thereby hindered.
However, it is necessary to accomodate the manipulation surface, i.e. the place where your customers effectuate the filling and the dispensing surface where the tank-truck stands while filling the product into the relevant storage tanks.
On-site refilling stations usually have both places (manipulation and dispensing surfaces) united for economic reasons. However, while filling the storage tanks it is not possible to dispense fuels for customers.
The manipulation surface should be downcornered and the down-take liquids are collected in the head tank. This is another double surfaced steel or concrete tank located underground. Its content has to be drawn off and disposed by the specialized company.
Waste disposal brings further expenses and also charges the environment, therefore we seek to minimize their volume. The manipulation surface therefore has to be covered with a roof to prevent the rainwaters to get into the surface inlet and into the head tank to prevent its frequent replenishment.