Sistema ótico para monitoramento em tempo real do teor de água livre presente em diesel: metodologia aplicável a tanques de armazenamento de subprodutos da indústria do petróleo

Abstract

Products and byproducts derived from oil, such as diesel, can incorporate water during the production, transportation, and storage process, as well as the biodiesel present in diesel. The presence of water in these products has always been a problem for the industry, causing serious damage to the equipment where they will be used and contributing to corrosion in the tanks responsible for their storage. This work deals with the development of a real-time monitoring and analysis methodology that will compose an engineering solution capable of identifying the presence of free water in storage tanks, making the proper disposal in an intelligent and autonomous way. For this purpose, a test bench was built that simulates the storage process of diesel/biodiesel, composed of: (i) storage tank, (ii) disposal tank, (iii) cleaning tank, (iv) instrumented optical unit operating in the near infrared and ultraviolet range, in addition to acquiring images, (v) electromechanical devices for controlling and actuating the operating modes of the developed plant, and (vi) expert software for controlling, acquiring, and analyzing the acquired data. The optical unit is capable of analyzing and classifying in real time the fluid present in storage tanks by near-infrared spectroscopy and UV spectrophotometry, as well as the use of computer vision techniques for fluid analysis through image recognition.