Post by Bull on Mar 8, 2019 15:37:06 GMT -5
I had the opportunity to visit a refinery where one of the operations is polymerization of polyethylene from ethane. Fascinating process, very high tech but I couldn't wait to get to the end of the tour, where they filled the rail cars. Before you get all excited, they wouldn't let me take pictures because... I don't know, they just took my phone before we entered the plant. Bottom line is after a convoluted process through billions of dollars of equipment, the little plastic resin pellet shows up at this 15 story tower to be loaded into the rail cars.
the pellets are pumped to the top and gravity feeds them in to the rail cars. They feed 4 cars at a time, 2 in each tower and fill two compartments in each rail car at a time. The people who operate it sit on a platform level with the top of the car. The hatches are opened up and a mandrel is inserted. Cool thing is that the mandrel doesn't just drop in the resin. The opening is on the side and it spins 360 degrees, spraying the pellets to the sides of the compartment. The end compartments are filled first and filled full. The middle compartments are then filled and they are filled to weight.
it takes up to 90 minutes to fill a car, usually less and each car weighs 160,000 to 190,000 lbs of material.
From the air (thank you google), you can see the rail set up. The rail company backs in 6 cars on each siding, and then comes back and pulls out two, which also pulls in the next two for loading.
As soon as they are full, they are shipped out. These are some of the cars that have arrived in Ohio.
apparently, someone here has a brake wheel fetish. To each his own as they say, but if you look closely, you can spot it. I've never paid much attention to them before, but I did look more closely this time and I was surprised just how thin they were.
and to finish up, here is the pump house and the silos to which the resin is pumped.
