In October 2019, the maintenance work on tank 107 at the Cepsa Gibraltar-San Roque Refinery facilities was awarded to DOMINION. The project includes the cleaning of the interior and exterior roof of the tank, with the aim of recovering the maximum amount of crude oil and minimising the amount of resulting waste in order to put it back into service as soon as possible and eliminating safety risks.

The situation presented itself with a 62-metre diameter tank and a total of 1,500 cubic metres of crude oil. Extracting the sludge manually increases the risks for the team of industrial clean-up operators in the confined space, so CEPSA was offered to carry out the project in three distinct phases led by a multidisciplinary technical team with extensive experience in each area.

The equipment used for the project included the Automated Tank Cleaning System ¨BLABO System¨, mobile centrifuge plant and ADR-approved vacuum-impeller equipment.
First, the sludge was recirculated and extracted from the interior by the automated tank cleaning system BLABO System. At the same time, the extracted product was treated in a sludge centrifuge plant to recover the crude oil and separate the solid residues contained in the sludge. Finally, DOMINION's specialised industrial pressure water cleaning team carried out the final part of the project which consisted of interior hydrodynamic cleaning of the tank surfaces and exterior roof.

This project demonstrated that DOMINION has the capacity, flexibility and adaptability to offer the best solution for each client. Without exposing industrial cleaning personnel to unnecessary safety hazards, a total of 1,300 cubic metres of crude oil was recovered without having to initially access the tank. In addition, our customer had the tank available for commissioning within 3 months, with the delivery time of the alternative being twice as long.