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Sizing your propane bulk plant

Posted by Greg Ezzell on Tue, Aug 11, 2009 @ 02:34 PM

With the agriculture harvest and drying season approaching, we have recently received many calls from farmers looking to increase their propane storage capacity in order to help decrease their costs for gas, by being able to accept transport delivery. 

Many of the calls start out with "I'm interested in buying a 12,000 gallon propane storage tank for a new bulk plant."  The 12,000 gallons being significant as they believe it will allow them to receive a 10,500 gallon transport sized load of propane (transport delivery typically has a significantly lower cost per gallon).  We then have to remind the buyer that propane storage tanks, by industry standards, should not be filled to more than 85% of the stated water capacity- so a 12,000 gallon bulk plant would need to be nearly completely empty to receive that transport sized delivery.

We thought it important to remind new propane storage tank buyers that you need to properly "size" your bulk plant.  We typically recommend 18,000 to 30,000 gallon bulk plants when feasible for our agriculture customers.  The extra storage not only allows them to receive a transport delivery, it will also allow them to buy and store more propane when prices are  seasonally low- thus helping to increase their bottom line.

Storage capacity for a 12,000 gallon tank = 10,200 gallons

Storage capacity for a 18,000 gallon tank = 15,300 gallons

Storage capacity for a 30,000 gallon tank = 25,500 gallons

For assistance with sizing your next bulk plant, please contact the propane storage systems specialist at TransTech Energy ( http://www.transtechenergy.com/ ).

Tags: Bulk Plant, Propane Storage, propane storage tank capacity, propane bulk plant

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