With more than 200 VRUs in operation across the world, Aker Kvaerner is a market leader. We design, manufacture and supply VRUs of any size and for virtually all applications, whether landbased or offshore. Our units comply with EU, US or other national legislative requirements.
We offer a wide range of after sales service agreements, studies of cleaner technology solutions, and assistance with development of existing vapour control installations.
Our Technology
We use a highly efficient and economical concept for our VRUs, the CVA system, which has been adopted by oil companies world wide. Applications include storage tank vents, rail car and truck loading facilities, marine terminals and ship loading.
The CVA system consists of two activated carbon beds; one at a time being connected to the vapour line, "adsorption mode", while the other undergoes regeneration by means of vacuum. Activated carbon has an extremely large surface area and hydrocarbons are adsorbed in a very thin layer on the carbon surface. The carbon can only adsorb a certain amount of hydrocarbons before reaching saturation. Consequently, the carbon is regenerated in order to restore its capacity, so hydrocarbons can be efficiently adsorbed in the following cycle. Thus, the batch of carbon inside the bed will perform with sufficient capacity over the years and, typically, only needs replacement after a period of seven to ten years.
Our Markets
It is a documented fact that the present CVA technology offers unsurpassed performance on the most important issues:
- Operating availability better than 95%
- Recovery rates of NMVOC from crude oil at 90% level
- High flexibility on crude oil variances and vapour throughput
- Lowest energy consumption
- Lowest maintenance cost
- Robust design for operation under severe conditions
For more than two decades, Carbon Bed Adsorption, or Carbon Vacuum-regenerated Adsorption (CVA), has been the mainstay of technologies used for gasoline vapour recovery. Aker Kvaerner Cool Sorption saw no reason why it should not have a similar position on the markets for crude oil and condensate vapour recovery. Consequently, Aker Kvaerner Cool Sorption and Danish Shell worked together at the turn of the millennium to set up a pilot plant in order to verify the usability of the CVA design on crude oil vapours. The tests turned out a great success and today, vapour recovery units are installed on several tank ships and terminals and still more are under construction.
The World’s Largest Vapour Recovery Plant
In early 2006, Aker Kvaerner was awarded the contract on design, construction and delivery of the world’s largest VOC plant to Statoil’s Mongstad crude oil loading terminal. The peak capacity is 36 000 cubic meters per hour vapour rate, recovery rate is 90% and the plant will recover vapours from two jetties simultaneously.
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