by Alex Brooks
A presentation was offered to the public on January 4 about the gas that will be used to heat the new aqua farm operation at the former Seagroatt facility in Berlin. It was held at the Berlin Firehouse, and was attended by a couple dozen citizens.
[private]The presentation was given by Jay Parent, who is the Safety Officer for NG Advantage, the company that will be supplying the gas. The company has a facility in Milton, Vermont, which is connected to a gas pipeline there. At that facility they take the gas from the pipeline and compress it for transportation by truck. These trucks will be the gas supply for the Berlin facility.
The point that Parent made first is that this is compressed natural gas (CNG), and his company handles it only as a gas, not as a liquid. It is 97% methane. This gas, unlike propane, is lighter than air, and if it escapes it rises and dissipates. The gas will burn only when its concentration in the air is 5% to 15%, and he noted that if it is vented from a tank, it reaches a flammable concentration only after it has risen 160 feet into the air.
The company loads the trucks in Vermont by compressing the gas to 4000 psi. These are tractor-trailers loaded with four high-strength cylinders inside a 40 foot long trailer. When the truck arrives at the site, it is parked, connected to a decompression facility, and left there until the gas in the cylinders is used up, at which point the company brings in another truck to replace it, and hauls away the empty one to be refilled at the facility in Vermont. Parent said he expects the Berlin facility will initially use about one truckload per day, and may, over the course of five years or so, increase that to two truckloads per day.
The process of decompressing the gas makes it cold, so it must be warmed up in the decompression facility, and there is a gas-fired boiler in the decompression facility, so the gas when it comes out of the pipe ready for use is at 50 psi and between 40 and 60 degrees in temperature.
All of the gas stored at the site is in the tanks on the trailer – there is no gas storage tank on the site. The big tank that has been built between the greenhouses and Route 22 is for water.
Parent described the many safety procedures that his company uses. He said the gas storage cylinders go through a battery of test to make sure they do not have any flaws. The cylinders must be returned to the factory every five years for retesting and certification. The cylinders have a 15 year life.
Parent said all the facilities and equipment used by his company meet or exceed State and Federal codes, and standards set by the National Fire Protection Association.
He said the decompression facility has sensors that send information back to NG Advantage’s home facility about temperature, pressure, and flow rates of the gas, and these are monitored 24-7 by personnel in their Milton Vermont facility. There are automatic alarms sent out if any of these readings reach unsafe levels. There are also two cameras on site, which are also monitored.
JP Noonan is the company that handles transporting the trailers with the gas in them. It is a large company with a great deal of experience transporting hazardous materials. The drivers who drive these trucks work only on CNG transportation, and are highly trained to handle it safely. Parent said they will bring the gas down Route 7 to Route 278, where they will cross over to Route 2 and come back through Grafton to Route 22, in order to avoid the low bridge where Route 2 crosses Route 22 in Petersburgh.
Parent was asked when he thought the new facility would be up and running, and gas deliveries would start, and he said sometime in February.[/private]