| Who can use this tool?
This tool can be used by those who are involved with keeping their petroleum storage tanks in compliance for level accuracy to meet Inventory Control and Custody Transfer regulations, by those who would like labor savings for their gaugings, and for those who want uniformity throughout their organization for the gauging calculations and the complicated ATG calibration process.
The crowning feature of PGL is that it provides you with the corrected value for the innage, outage, and the fuel level in the case of an outage. The corrected value is the value after applying the calibration factors determined by the NIST* for the selected gauging tape. What is this compliance tool?PGL is a portable calculating, calibrating, and logging device to assist in fuel tank gauging and ATG level calibration. It is supplied as a stand-alone program to operate on a hand-held PDA device, with Pocket PC. All information is logged internally in the PDA (stored in memory) for all tanks that are gauged. Multiple tank farms are supported and all data may be off-loaded afterwards for hard-copy or for other processing. Labor Savings Performing a manual gauge on a fuel tank involves a number of steps that makes it labor intensive. PGL can decrease some of that labor in regard to the calculations and logging of a straightforward manual gauge but it really saves time when it comes to ATG calibration. The entire formal procedure is contained within PGL and does all the calculations for Pass/Fail plus tape correction and provides automatic electronic storage of the data. Return trips to a tank for re-gauging are something in the past now. With PGL used at the tank top, or at the fuels office if data is called in, you literally have instantaneous results for your gauge or calibration procedure. Compliance Compliance here refers to a facility’s conformity to API standards as set out in their document Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards Chapter 3 - Tank Gauging, Section 3.1B.4 "Field Calibration of Automatic Tank Gauges". This is a very involved procedure with exacting requirements and specific parameters for determining whether a test has Passed or Failed. A failure can occur for either the manual gaugings or the ATG level readings or both. The Asteroid PGL is programmed with all the calibration requirements for Inventory Control and Custody Transfer, the 3 Calibration Stages with choice of Test Level, the number of soundings required per test, with the automatic Tape Correction for the manual gauges, and the final result tests of Pass or Fail for the ATG and the gaugings. All of this capability is provided in a hand-held PDA device that allows you to do the work in situ – right at the tank, in a matter of seconds and not wait for someone to attempt to do the work manually in a non-professional and most likely inaccurate process or in a non-consistent manner among your facilities. Uniformity At present, the petroleum storage tank farm community, both military and commercial, is operating in a disjointed and independent mode, despite the API regulations that exist, relative to two issues: 1) gauging tape corrections and 2) ATG calibration. *API = American Petroleum Institute NIST = National Institute of Standards and Technology
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With regard to gauging tape corrections, few installations are even applying any corrections and if they are it is only temperature (1 of 4 required corrections). The science of gauging tape correction is esoteric, non-ubiquitous, and not universally understood. Consequently, it is not or is ill-applied in the industry. PGL is the first industry tool to contain all the proper tape corrections for an innage or outage and bob or tape fuel cut. Facilities complying exactly with the API’s Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards for ATG calibration in a formal manner is another question. This standard is quite involved and requires a facility to appoint someone to become familiar with it and to set up a documented procedural process with the capabilities to manually or possibly with Excel calculate the fuel level after gauging and then determine the calibration Pass/Fail results. PGL , besides providing the normal day-to-day innage or outage gauging calculations for a tank (with tape corrections), provides a formalized entry and electronic logging of the calibration data required to conform to all the stringent API regs for ATG calibration. As it is now, there is a definite inconsistency and non-uniformity from one facility to another. Who knows what they used to get their results - are they accurate, are they complete, are they electronically documented, are you comparing apples to apples? With PGL as a tool used throughout the system, there will be uniformity, consistency, and standardization! example "Final" calibration screen 
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With the distribution and utilization of one tool - the Petroleum Gauging Logger, PGL – you can establish a consistency and uniformity throughout your organization for labor savings, proper gauging tape corrections, accurate and consistent tank gauging calculations, and finally having an accurate and formalized calculation and documentation of the field calibration of your ATG systems for level. |
PGL: A New Compliance Assistance Tool
A hand-held device that can be used at the tank site to perform innages, outages, and ATG level calibration!This device is unique to the petroleum gauging industry.
No other device can provide you with the instantaneous calculations with "all" of the necessary tape corrections for either an innage or outage calibration.
PGL is compliant with all API standards and provides you with the format for all three calibration procedures.
PGL provides 4 basic tools:
- INNAGE
- OUTAGE
- CALIBRATION
- GNVC- Gross/Net Volume Calculator (future option)
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Save $100 and purchase both PGL and PGLR. |
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| INNAGE
There are two fundamental procedures for obtaining level gauges: innage and outage (ullage). The basic difference between the two procedures is the fixed point of reference (datum line). The Innage gauge selection is available via the Tools Menu. An innage gauge is the depth of liquid in a tank as measured upward from the bottom of the tank, or a fixed datum plate, to the surface of the liquid. If the datum point is the bottom of the tank, the innage reading corresponds directly to the actual level of the product in the tank. After entering your tape cut, the temperature of the fuel, and selecting the appropriate Tape No., PGL will display the corrected innage value for the gauge measurement you just took. While entry of the Reference Point value is not required to calculate the Innage Corrected value, it is provided as a means of logging the actual Reference Point value that was used in the innage measurement. |
OUTAGE This selection is available via the Tools Menu. An outage (ullage) measurement is a measure of the vapor space above the product as measured from a top reference point downward to the surface of the liquid. The level is computed by subtracting the measured outage from the tank's reference point. When Pocket PGL is used in the field and an outage gauge will be performed, a "PreOutage" calculation is available to provide an estimate of the outage prior to lowering the tape in the tank. After entering your gauged Reference Point value, your bob/tape cut, the temperature of the fuel, and selecting the appropriate Tape No., PGL will display the corrected outage value for the gauge measurement you just took as well as the "level" of the fuel. |
| CALIBRATION
The calibration program is available via the Tools Menu. The foremost feature of Pocket PGL is its implementation of the standards as dictated by API document, Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards Chapter 3 - Tank Gauging, Section 3.1B.4 "Field Calibration of Automatic Tank Gauges". Now with PGL you are able to automate that process. It provides the format, the data entry, the logging, and the calculations to tell you whether the ATG system has passed or failed the calibration regulations. In addition, it automatically provides the necessary "tape corrections" for the manual gauging. Refer to the PGL: ATG Calibration page for an indepth look at the involved steps required in an ATG calibration and how PGL can help you eliminate some of that burdensome process. |
TAPE CORRECTION While there are many individual subprograms or tools in PGL that greatly aid the gauger and or the compliance regulator for tank gauging, it is Tape Correction that goes un-noticed and unappreciated because of its simplicity of use - simply enter two values (temperature and Tape No.) and you have a complicated application of several engineering physical phenomenon automatically compensated for by PGL. Asteroid Scientific believes that there is no device on the market, handheld or otherwise, that fully and accurately addresses the tape correction phenomenon. We have seen the insufficient and even incorrect attempt to correct for tape expansion and contraction by fuel handling agencies. Gauging tape correction is a subject not well understood by industry and not applied rigorously. The vast majority of large tanks out there are not calibrated correctly. Refer to the Tape Number, subsection on the PGL: ATG Calibration page for more information on this very important subject. |
| PREOUTAGE PreOutage is available on the Outage screen from the Menu Bar. When Pocket PGL is used in the field and an outage gauge will be performed, a "PreOutage" calculation is available to provide an estimate of the outage prior to lowering the tape in the tank. While you will normally know ahead of time the "level" in the tank (at least the supposed level), you would like to know what the estimated outage is so that you can gauge how far down you will have to lower the tape before you hit the fuel. In very high tanks that happen to be at a low "level", this is very helpful. Using the Estimated Outage as a guide, you could then perform the actual outage measurement in the tank and then enter the data in the Pocket PGL for the true outage. However, you can further simplify the process and let PGL determine a convenient Reference Point value for you, based on what approximate Cut value you would like to use in your measurement. If you are satisfied with the results from the PreOutage calculation you may transfer the results to the Outage screen. This will automatically update the input controls on the Outage screen with the Reference Point setting, the Estimated Cut, and the Cut Type. You would then apply the fuel paste on the tape in the area of the desired Cut and using the Reference Point as your exact guide, you would perform the actual outage measurement in the tank. After retrieving the tape you would then enter the actual Cut in the PGL (it should be very close to the Estimated Cut that was calculated). After entering the Tape No. and the fuel temperature you will have the corrected Outage and the fuel level displayed. |
Miscellaneous Error Detection Even though all the data entry controls are pull-down lists and thus character entry errors are not possible, it is still possible to inadvertently make an incorrect selection of data that is not consistent with other selected parameters. For example: If the entered level for PreOutage exceeds the value for the Reference Depth for the selected tank, then this would be a physical impossibility and generates a meaningless Estimated Outage. Or if the [+] Cut Type (Bob) selection is made and the entered Cut value is greater than the length of the bob for the selected Tape Number, then this is another incorrect situation. By changing the appropriate parameter, a new calculation will be performed and the correct data will then be displayed and the error indications will be removed. Level Converter for Decimal/Fractional Feet PreOutage (available only on the Outage screen) provides a built-in converter for decimal feet to fractional feet or fractional feet to decimal feet. Memory Logging Memory Logging is simply an automatic process that Pocket PGL does to record or log the last selections and data entries that were made on the screen so that when you return to that particular Tank Farm and that particular Tank No., you will have displayed the last entries you made. If you exit the program and then restart it, it does not load with some predefined default data, it will load with the last screen that was present before you exited the program. Besides memory logging for the Innage and Outage screens, memory logging is also included for the more sophisticated calibration screens where there is a lot of data entry and calculated displays. Time Stamp In addition to normal, automatic Memory Logging, an operator interface for logging the date and time of the execution of a gauge or of a calibration is provided by a button labeled Time Stamp. |
| GNVC Gross/Net Volume Calculator This selection is available via the Tools Menu and is an "add-on" feature. GNVC provides the basic function of our desktop TICAL program, i.e., the calculation of the gross and net volumes for your tanks. |
PGLR |
