Another Gauge Problem

[BigInch]

Buckeye Macungie Tank Farm, Emmaus, PA
Fortunately nobody was injured or killed and damages were minimal ... this time.

The investigation revealed that the set points of alarms and the tanks gauging system had not been accurately set or checked for at least one year. The tank side gauge and the GSI tracking system were reading about 18 inches lower than actual levels in the tank. The independent Hi-Hi magnetrol alarm level was set 7 inches too high. As a result, the tank gauge was showing the tank level to be at max safe fill at the same time the Hi-Hi alarm was received and, however the tank was in an overfill condition.

http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/staticfiles//PHMSA/PipelineFailureReports/Final_Buckeye_Tank_228_Overfill_

[Redacted_for_Internet].pdf

 

[BUGGAR]

"John, if that alarm goes off again, I found that if you turn this screw here a little to the left, it won't go off so much."

 

[JohnRBaker]

This reminds me of the comments made after the crash of Northwest Airlines #255 at Detroit Metro Airport in 1987.

While the NTSB never actually concluded that someone had deliberately disabled the stall warning system by flipping off the circuit breaker controlling this system, after the crash there were several reports from unnamed pilots who stated that on occasion people had turned-off the audio warning systems simply because many pilots considered them to be unnecessarily redundant and a big PIA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_255

Note that I was living and working in Detroit at the time of the crash and that I had on occasion taken that same NW flight to Orange County as our primarily development office was located there, where I had worked from 1980 thru 1985 and where I worked after I went back to SoCal shortly after this accident took place.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[itsmoked]

Link is dead BIG.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[BigInch]

Buckeye must have had it snuffed.
Main Point of the report was even if you install it, it needs proper maintenance and operation.
Design engineers tend to ignore that aspect of their work. Simply specifying that something be installed doesn't necessarily mean a peaceful eternity.

Here's the page with all the recent reports,
Maybe we can find it again.

http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/pipeline/library/reports/pipeline-failure-investigation-reports

 

[bimr]

The link address was incomplete:

http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/PHMSA/PipelineFailureReports/Final_Buckeye_Tank_228_Overfill_

[Redacted_for_Internet].pdf

 

[stevenal]

The brackets are messing it up. Try cutting and pasting

http://www.phmsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/PHMSA

and then append PipelineFailureReports/Final_Buckeye_Tank_228_Overfill_[Redacted_for_Internet].pdf

 

[BigInch]

it is Buckeye Partners LP (on the 7th item on the webpage) failure date is Sept 20, 2011

 

[bimr]

Some kind of software error on eng tips truncates the web address.

 

[IRstuff]

It's the square brackets, which are used by the site to tag TGML commands. Any site that allows user input of ML commands is going to have problems somewhere along the line.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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