Safety and endurance brought to road tanker operations

MechTronic designs and manufactures delivery systems for home heating DERV, gasoline, kerosene. Also, because of the operational and safety critical nature of its clients’ services, it provides 24 hour guaranteed support across all sectors of industry. Its product portfolio includes metering and gauging systems for road tankers, foot valves, bottom loading valves, manifolds and tanker overfill prevention systems, plus many associated products and systems.

Durability, robustness and serviceability are essential ingredients in the design of every MechTronic fuel transfer system. These are built in the knowledge that they may face extreme climatic conditions, demanding operational duties and exposure to harsh chemicals, in the UK and Europe.

Further, operational safety has to be ensured through many aspects of design, including electrical and pneumatic interlocks that prevent potentially dangerous actions. For instance, a truck’s brakes can be pneumatically interlocked into the ‘on’ position to prevent the driver from pulling away whilst the fuel lines are still connected to the gantry.

“We also use a Spelsberg enclosure for our EB80 OPTIMATE electronic metering system, the pneumatic controller of the tanker’s fuel pumping system,” said Ben Wilkes one of MechTronic’s long-serving engineers. This electronic system ensures improves efficiency and productivity whilst guaranteeing that cross-contamination and driver errors cannot occur.

“This housing not only has to be robust and long lasting, but the internal components must be protected to IP66 rating.”

MechTronic has used Spelsberg enclosures for these arduous duties for many years, not only because they meet the requirements for robustness and longevity but also because they are easy to use. They can be engraved or printed with operating instructions and safety information can have openings punched through in any configuration to suit individual applications are easily populated with electrical and pneumatic equipment and are simple to mount during manufacture of the fuel delivery system.

Significantly, they can be supplied with either a transparent or opaque lid – MechTronic generally fit a transparent lid because it is more ergonomic, while an opaque lid would help discourage unauthorised people from prying.

MechTronic always uses enclosures from Spelsberg’s TK range, which are made in a super strong, long lasting halogen free engineering plastic such as polystyrene or polycarbonate. Such materials will not corrode even under the most extreme environmental conditions and are resistant to most acids, alkalis and other harsh chemicals associated with hydrocarbon fuels. They have a flammability rating of VDE 0471, UL94, 650°C/HB, making them secure in road tankering operations, while their operating temperature range of -25 to 40°C means they can be used in virtually any climate in the world.

Physically they have an ingress protection rating of IP66 and an impact resistance of IK07, along with an integral polyurethane cover gasket and sealing plugs for use with any required knockouts.

Wilkes continued: “Most of our systems will include two or three Spelsberg enclosures and, over the many years we have been using them, we have built up supreme confidence in their performance and reliability.

“When you are responsible for designing and building systems that will have an operating life in excess of ten years, you don’t take chances or cut corners. Quite simply you always use the best components and build to the highest standards.”