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Often hazardous goods must be delivered to hard-to-reach areas where railway infrastructure is not available. The goods transportation in tank containers, among other issues, allows tackling a problem of the supply of areas located far away from railways and shortening delivery time.

Traditional plans of petrochemicals transportation including those of high class of hazard goods are bound to the current railway infrastructure. Because of this, product from the technological viewpoint cannot be delivered to an end user, if it is transported in rail tank cars. Therefore, plants that have no access to railway and no products pipeline leading to the loading rack beside branch railway use motor transport. Unfortunately, this limits product markets for the nearest regions.

Practice example

With standard export transportation through ports, goods are transported in tank cars to a Russian port, then goods are carried to a European port by tanker and discharged into port storage tanks (with further moving into Euro tank cars) or into tank cars to be delivered to an end user. Thus, the goods motion is carried out with multiple transfusion of product (in transshipment locations, at mode of transport change points or with change of railway track width), in consequence of which the loss of product occurs, costs grow and delivery time increases. Due to limited capacity of transfusion stations located in ports, the detention of cars takes place, and consequently, costs increase and risk of fire and environmental hazard grows.

The use of tank containers with goods transportation allows maintaining initial product quality due to the absence of multiple product transfusions and direct contact with environment, avoiding material loss of goods and funds with the detention of cars, delivering goods to customers "from-door-to-door” practically without losses and without damages to environment.

However, there are negative trends too, connected with multimodal transportation: the process of container return after unloading becomes more complicated, which compels a rolling stock owner to strengthen the responsibility for its integrity.

Problems related to the use of tank containers when transporting hazardous goods

Hazardous goods include weed and pest-killer chemicals, radioactive, highly flammable and explosive materials. They must be handled and transported by high-qualified personnel. Failure to meet guidelines and regulation requirements for hazardous goods delivery may cause unpredictable consequences, such as explosion, environment chemical contamination and danger for human life.

Therefore, tank containers that are intended to transport some hazardous goods must meet certain requirements: to be manufactured of stainless steel, to be fitted with a bursting disc, etc. All this increases significantly the cost of tank container itself and its operation costs.

Besides, the use of tank containers is accompanied with the following problems:

• Duration of station opening process for the container transportation
• Reception of a license for hazardous goods transportation
• Lack of repair depots in sufficient amount
• Improperly and badly executed operating documentation
• Full absence of repair documentation
• Re-inspection issues
• Lack of locations for flushing and steaming of empty tank containers
• Improper implementation of guarantees by a number of manufacturers
• Complicated operation conditions related to both climatic conditions and breach of tank container transportation regulations. It first of all concerns work on flatcar classification on sundries depots (gravity switching).
• Failure to meet regulations for handling
• Theft of expensive valves, hatches and other parts of tank containers when transporting, etc.

Since its establishment, Spectransgarant has obtained significant experience related to the transportation of hazardous bulk goods in tank containers. It allows organizing the process such that our customers are unaware of these problems; we are engaged in the solution of the problems.

Our specialists have developed goods transportation process in tank containers both by rail transport and with mixed transportation by other modes of transport across Russia and CIS.

Hazardous goods classification

Hazardous goods that require specific precautions when transporting include substances and materials possessing physical and chemical properties of high danger level as per GOST 19433-88: Class 1 – high flammable liquids; Class 2 – compressed gases liquefied by cooling and dissolved under pressure; Class 3 – high flammable liquids; Class 4 – high flammable substances and materials (besides those classified as explosive ones); Class – 5 oxidizing substances and organic peroxides; Class 6 – poisonous and infectious substances; Class 7 – radioactive substances having specific activity more than 70 kBq/kg (nCi/g); Class 8 – caustic and corrosive substances; Class 9 – substances having relatively low danger when transporting that are not ascribed to no one of the above mentioned classes, but that require to apply to them certain transportation and storage regulations.

Toplivny Rynok Journal