£1m investment aims to cut wastage at lubricants business

Lubricants and oils supplier, Exol Lubricants, has invested £1m into an automated liquid transfer system, delivered to reduce waste product lost during the blending process.

Following investigative work into product losses during production, a new, sustainable project called a Pigging Line has been installed at Exol Lubricants’ blending plant in Rotherham.

Pigging refers to technologies that use specialist projectiles to recover, rather than waste, residual liquid in pipelines.

Liquid product recovery is used to reclaim product from pipelines, to reduce waste, increase yields and capacity, and improve the efficiency of manufacturing and production processes.

Simon Matthews, product development manager at Exol Lubricants, said: “Following the initial commissioning process, losses of up to 50,000 litres per day have been recovered, with multiple transfers speeding up loading times by up to 50%.

“The projectile that is used in the pipeline makes a squeal similar to a pig when in use, which gives the system its moniker.”

Exol’s latest investment forms part of a wider supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system linking together both product transfer, volume control and delivery through accurate, mass flow meters to ensure full traceability of all process volumes between sites.