Electro-hydraulic actuators deliver improved safety at India’s tank farms

Following an accidental fire at the IOCL Jaipur Terminal, an extensive review of safety measures recommended by the MB Lal Committee has resulted in the introduction of failsafe actuators for critical tank farm applications.

These valves, known as ROSOV (Remote Operated Shut-off Valves), now provide tank overfill protection at the majority of storage facilities owned by the Indian oil industry.

The application required the valves to be electrically operated, spring-return failsafe with SIL2 functional safety certification for use in hazardous areas.

After a two-year specification writing period, Rotork Skilmatic SI/EH electro-hydraulic actuators operating triple-offset butterfly valves were selected as the standard for the critical ROSOV application.

The Rotork Skilmatic is a self-contained electro-hydraulic valve actuator, which features non-intrusive setting, performance monitoring and configurable data logging of valve and process data for analysis, preventative maintenance and asset management.

To-date, over 1,600 Skilmatic actuators have been supplied through Indian valvemakers.

All actuators are certified explosion-proof to Exd llB T4 with CCoE (Chief Controller of Explosives) approval and SIL2 functional safety system certification.

For this application, actuators are supplied with dual Modbus fieldbus communications and separate local controls mounted outside the tank bung with a local ESD (Emergency Shut Down) pushbutton.

Along with the above, Rotork was also selected to supply 4000 CP/GP spring return pneumatic actuators to various valvemakers for tank farm applications.