The profitability of any Bunker Blender is determined by how closely the safe blend viscosity can be set to the final product specification. This safe blend viscosity is in turn dependent on the intrinsic accuracy of the blender, as this determines the margin a blender can safely operate at without exceeding the product viscosity specification. The closer this target is, the lower the level of giveaway resulting in the lowest blend cost and the highest level of profitability.

FluiVisc™ combines three unique technology packages to enhance the accuracy and reliability of any FluiBlender™ to minimize expensive give away and reduce blend costs:

1. Dynamic Viscosity Temperature Compensation
2. Enhanced Accuracy Direct Measurement of Viscosity to +/-1 % of the blend viscosity
3. Viscosity Performance Verification - Self Diagnostic and Viscosity Verification to enable real time quality assurance of viscosity measurement accuracy and reliability

 FluiVisc™ Dynamic Temperature Viscosity Compensation

Viscosity dramatically changes with temperature and every blend of oil has its own unique relationship between temperature and viscosity. This relationship alters every time the feedstock changes, even if the final product viscosity from batch to batch is identical. This phenomenon can have a very significant impact on the accuracy of any blender.

Traditional trim control blenders measure viscosity only once at the process temperature. Standard calibration curves are then used to “guestimate” the actual blend viscosity at the reference temperature and from these inaccurate measurements critical changes to the blend ratio are made. These curves will not reflect the actual blend being processed and therefore introduce significant error.

FluiVisc™ takes measurements of viscosity at multiple temperatures between the operating and the reference temperatures. This develops accurate compensation curves and then continuously retunes them as the feedstock changes and the blend ratio alters. Unlike traditional blenders, FluiVisc™ will control the blender at a temperature much closer to the reference temperature. It then fine tunes the blend based on a compensation curve that truly represents the actual oil being processed irrespective of any changes in feedstock or blend ratio.

FluiVisc™ Direct Viscosity Measurement Technology

Traditional blenders use secondary measurement techniques to estimate viscosity based on a density measurement that is then converted to a viscosity measurement. This technique can only measure viscosity to +/- 1% of the full calibrated span which is typically greater than the maximum feedstock viscosity processed by the blender. This introduces significant error particularly when cost effective high viscosity feed stocks are cut to produce low viscosity high premium bunker fuels. For a 120 cSt product blended from a 700 cSt feedstock this would generate an error of +/- 7 cSt or 6% of the blend specification.

FluiVisc™ utilizes direct viscometer technology that achieves measurement accuracy of +/- 1% of the blend viscosity and not the span viscosity. For the same 120 cSt blend the error generated would only be +/-1.2 cSt and not +/-7 cSt associated with a traditional blender.

This intrinsic advantage in accuracy allows FluiVisc™ to improve the safe blend target viscosity and thereby significantly reduce give away and blend costs:

FluiVisc™ Viscometer Verification System

All analyzer technology is prone to trending and requires constant monitoring. The FluiVisc™ Viscosity Verification System   continually monitors the performance of each viscometer to ensure the integrity, accuracy and reliability of a FluiBlend™ package. This enables a FluiBlend to operate at safe blend viscosities far closer to the final product specification than traditional blenders.

FluiVisc™ Animation