Precise Measurement of Liquid Petroleum Tank Volume Based On Data Cloud Analysis

Metal tanks are generally used for the measurement of liquid petroleum products for fiscal or custody transfer application. One tank volume precise measurement method based on data cloud analysis was studied, which was acquired by laser scanning principle. Method of distance measurement by laser phase shift and angular measurement by optical grating were applied to acquire coordinates of points in tank shell under the control of a servo system. Direct Iterative Method (DIM) and Section Area Method (SAM) were used to process measured data for vertical and horizontal tanks respectively. In comparison experiment, one 1000m(3) vertical tank and one 30m(3) horizontal tank were used as test objects. In the vertical tank experiment, the largest measured radius difference between the new laser method and strapping method (international arbitrary standard) is 2.8mm. In the horizontal tank experiment, the calibration result from laser scanning method is more close to reference than manual geometric method, and the mean deviation in full-scale range of the former and latter method are 75L and 141L respectively; with the increase of liquid level, the relative errors of laser scanning method and manual geometric method become smaller, and the mean relative errors are 0.6% and 1.5% respectively. By using the method discussed, the calibration efficiency of tank volume can be improved.