An empty road tank truck arrives at the loading station gate. The security personnel sees the tanker drivers papers authorizing him to fill the tanker with the chemical say Benzene. He then issues an RFID card to the driver who then drives his vehicle to the benzene tanker loading terminal. He holds the card near the batch controller station’s RFID reader and the setpoint is automatically set by the controller based on his card. He uses the loading arm to fill up the tanker. This ensures that none of the chemical plant factory’s operators are involved in the loading, the truck driver cannot load excess quantity of the chemical and the entire operation with times are recorded in the batch controller and transmitted to the plants Central Control System. This may become the norm at all chemical plants, oil terminals, etc.
RFID Solution Of Gasoline Dispensing:
Gasoline stations which are part of the fuelling contract fitted with RFID-enabled gasoline dispensing units. RFID tags are fitted to the trucks. When a truck approaches a filling station unit, the RFID reader recognizes it as an authorized truck and enables the driver to fill in gasoline.
Once the truck drives away the gasoline pump shuts and information about the truck (number, type, etc) and gasoline dispensing information (amount filled, time, date, time spent in filling, etc) is relayed immediately to the headquarters of both the trucking company as well as the gasoline dispensing company, thus keeping a track of trucks which are being refilled.
Present Scenario Of Gasoline Dispensing
Large bulk transporters who have fleets of trucks to carry their materials have to operate gasoline filling stations, located in their yards, where truck drivers can refuel their trucks. Consider the problem faced by a large cement company, that operates a large fleet of trucks. The trucks have to be periodically refueled at gasoline stations.
Typically the driver takes the truck to a fuelling station. Authorization is based mostly on personal identification by the fuel station personnel, which opens the system to misuse and unauthorized fuel fills.
The problems with the present system are:
- Scope for misuse as authorization is based on personal relationships.
- Difficult to repeatedly track information like which trucks go to which fuel stations, whether all such refueling trips are necessary, etc.
- The time gap between event occurrence and knowledge about it to management.
Advantages Of RFID Solution
- Automatic, fast & secure authorization due to RFID tags mounted on the vehicle itself. There is no waste of time when the driver approaches the filling station as there are no cards to be swiped.
- Gasoline filling station can be unmanned. Authorization is on basis of RFID tags and not personal relationships between truck drivers and gas attendants
- Keeps a near real-time track of trucks, gasoline filled and drivers, leading to optimized operations. Minimizes billing errors too. Allows daily reports an tracking, reconciliation of records between the trucking company and the gasoline company.
Future Scenarios Of Gasoline Dispensing
This application is useful for not only fuel filling, but also for loading of road tanker trucks with chemicals, oil or even gasoline at filling terminals and tank farms. The same process described above can be used by a chemical manufacturing company for example to automate its loading and dispatches.Imagine the following scenario, which is now followed at many modern chemical processing plants.
