A Guide to Tank Cleaning From

Vegetable Oil to Methanol

Written by Capt Rajeev Jassal on March 10, 2018

There is no single fail-proof method to get your tanks

cleaned to methanol standard after Vegetable oil. Sorry!!!

I wish if I could tell you that if you did this particular thing
your tanks will be ready for methanol standard.

But it just doesn’t happen that way.

 The reality is that you can’t rely on one technique to clean
your tanks after Vegetable oil.

You have to approach it using a combination of different

strategies.

But positive thing is that there are few principles that we

need to follow to make the tank cleaning much easier and
less troublesome.

Let us discuss.

Type of Vegetable oil

The first and foremost, we must know the type of palm oil
that we had in the tanks. This is important because the
tank cleaning method would depend on that.

If we make a mistake in this, we can never be able to

clean the tanks to methanol standard. Never!!!

So here is the type of palm oils that I am referring to.

 Dry

 Semi-dry
 Non-dry

The question is, how to find which category palm oil

loaded on your vessel falls into. Tank cleaning software
(provided on board by of the chemical tanker operators)
helps in that.

Milbros is one of such software. Let us say we just

discharged following Vegetable oils
 Sunflower oil

 Crude palm oil

 Palm Stearin

And we want to check the type of Veg oil for “Sunflower

oil”. Open Milbros on the computer.
It will lead you to the initial screen.

In the search option, type Sunflower oil and choose

sunflower oil from the options.
In the sunflower oil screen, go to notes and under
Cleaning, look for any information of describing sunflower
oil as drying or Semi-drying oil.
As you can see, Sunflower oil, in fact, a drying or Semi-
drying oil.

This information can also be found in other resources

like Dr. Verwey’s tank cleaning guide.

Precaution with drying and Semi-Drying

palm oils
 Now, why is it so important to know if the palm oil is
drying or Semi-drying type?

The drying and semi-drying oils get to harden when it

comes in contact with air.

If allowed to come in direct contact with air, these palm

oils would dry quickly and become hardened on the tank
coating. There are few conditions in which these oils can
dry on the coating.

 If there is no moisture in the tank and/or

 If there is the high temperature in the tank.

Why high temperature? Because higher temperature

absorbs the moisture from the atmosphere. This is
particularly important while washing the tanks containing
drying or semi-drying palm oils.

We must initially wash these tanks with ambient seawater.

If we use hot sea water, the palm oil will become
hardened on the coating and it will not be possible to
remove this from the coating.

Another important point is to wash these tanks as soon as

discharging is completed and empty tank certificate issued
 by the surveyor. If the terminal does not allow tank
cleaning at berth, we can just introduce some water in the
tank and recirculate it for few seconds in every few hours
to keep the tank bulkheads moist.

This may look to be a small step but it really helps in a big

way.

Take-away points for drying/Semi-drying palm oils:

 Initially wash the tanks containing drying or semi-
drying palm oils with ambient seawater (or fresh water)
for 1-1.5 hours.

 Keep the tank moist till the time tank cleaning is

commenced.

General tank cleaning procedure

There are tons of resources to advise the general

procedure to follow for cleaning the tank after a cargo. As
discussed Milbros is one of these resources.

In the Milbros software, go to “From/to cleaning” section.

Enter the “from and to” cargoes and click on “View
Results”.

This will show you the recommended cleaning, step by

step.
 Now if you follow these steps exactly as it is, there is no
guarantee that your tanks will be ready to wall wash
standard.
You may have to clean for an extended period (2-3 hrs
mentioned in these steps may not be enough). Usually, 4
hours washing cycle is considered to be sufficient.

Main principles of tank cleaning

There are a number of tank cleaning chemicals that we

may use during tank cleaning but the use of these
chemicals helps only to a certain extent.

There are somethings other than the use of chemicals that

brings wonder results for the tank cleaning.

An efficient cleaning of tanks require

 Physical Cleaning of the tanks

 Chemical cleaning of the tanks

Physical cleaning of the tank

Remember in old time (and in some places, even today)
how the clothes are washed manually.

Yes, mainly by use of force.

More force, better cleaning. Though damage to the clothes

needs to be kept in mind when using too excessive force.

Same applies to the tank cleaning on chemical tankers.

The pressure of tank cleaning water is very important for
efficient cleaning.

Washing of the tanks at 6 bars pressure will achieve

nothing. More pressure the better.
Usually, 8 to 10 bars is considered to be good pressure, 8
Bars being the minimum. If our system allows, we must
try to achieve at least 9 bars pressure in the tank cleaning
line.

This is because of the fact that pressure in tank cleaning

line and at the tip of the tank cleaning machine will not be
same as the pressure that hits the bulkheads.

Take-away points: Higher the pressure of the tank

cleaning medium, better will be the cleaning. Reduce the
number of tanks being washed if pressure is less.
Chemical cleaning of tanks
When I say, cleaning of the tanks chemically, I do not
mean the use of chemicals. There is something else more
important than using chemicals for cleaning.

That is temperature. Yes, the temperature is the best

chemical you will have during tank cleaning.

More the temperature of the cleaning medium better will

be the cleaning.

Allow me to explain with the same analogy of washing of

clothes. Dip a similar dirty shirt in cold water and in hot
water buckets and leave it there for few hours.

After few hours when we take out the shirts, water in

which of the bucket you would expect to be cleaner?

Of course, the cold water will be cleaner as hot water

would have taken more dirt out of the shirt. But how?

This is the chemical reaction I am talking about here.

When I talked about the pressure, I talked about the

pressure at which the water hits the bulkhead and not the
pressure at the nozzle tip or in the tank cleaning line.
Same applies to the temperature.

If the bulkhead itself is cold or has the ballast on the other

side of the bulkhead, the cleaning will not be effective.

I totally agree that removing the ballast from the adjacent

ballast tanks is a real pain but believe me when I say it.
Gains in terms of effectiveness of the cleaning outshines
the pain of removing the ballast.

So we must lower the ballast water level from the

adjacent tanks to a level where the water is not touching
any of the cargo tank bulkheads.
But the use of higher temperatures is not true every time.
There are some exceptions to this like the initial washing
of drying and semi-drying palm oils (More exceptions later
in this blog).

Take-away points: Barring few exceptions, higher the

temperature, better will be the cleaning.

Use of chemicals
While high pressure and higher temperatures will do most
of the job, cleaning to wall wash standard would still most
likely require the use of chemical re-circulation in the
tanks.

And the question is which chemical to use?

The first condition for choosing the tank cleaning chemical

is that chemicals need to be IMO Approved. MEPC circular
list all the chemicals with their makers that are approved
for use by IMO.

Check if the chemical you have planned to use are in this

list.

The second condition is that the chemicals need to be safe

to use with respect to the tank coating. This information
can be found from the information provided by the
chemical maker.
 Even when these conditions are satisfied, we still need to
choose from the number of chemicals available in the
market. And which chemicals work best will usually come
by the experience of tank cleaning.

Generally, any of these chemicals are good for cleaning

the palm oil tanks

 Grato 50 (for stainless steel tanks) and Grato 14 (for

Zinc/Epoxy coated tanks) Make: CP Metal Chemicals
 Marclean SC or Marclean AC+ Make: Teca

 Caretank Eco Make: Marine Care

These are the chemical to do the main wash which is to
make the tanks clean in all respects. But apart from these
chemicals, you may need to have few other chemicals too
just in case you.

You may need to have chemicals to remove odor from the

tanks or color from the samples.

Well, some companies do not give many options to choose

from and they have fixed chemicals to choose from and
have the recommended list and quantities of the chemicals
to maintain on board.

This may in a way remove some load from the chief

officer.

We also need to have an estimate of what quantity of the

chemicals would be required for tank cleaning. This can
easily be calculated from the concentration of chemical
required in the chemical solution and minimum volume of
solution required for the pump to take suction during re-
circulation.

For example, 0.5% of Caretank Eco is recommended for

re-circulation. Let us say 3 m3 (3000 liters) of water is
required for the pump to maintain good pressure during
the re-circulation.

Then the quantity of Caretank Eco for one tank would be

3000 x 0.5/100 = 15 Liters.

Chemical Re-circulation

For the chemical re-circulation to be effective, there is this

one pre-condition.

The initial cleaning needs to be effective. This means that

there should not be any traces of previous cargo in the
tank. The tanks need to be absolutely clean visually. And
higher temperature/Higher pressure during initial cleaning
really helps in that.

The higher temperature-better cleaning is applicable to

the chemical re-circulation also but there are few points
that we need to keep in mind.
1. Caustic based chemicals can make your tanks
white if heated to higher temperatures.
If caustic based chemicals are used for re-circulation, we
need to be careful with heating the solution.

The temperature of the cleaning solution should not be

increased to more than 40 C.

It is also recommended to not heat the solution at all but

sometimes it is unavoidable especially when cleaning in a
low-temperature environment.

2. Using fresh water for making the cleaning

solution
If you need to heat the chemical solution used for
recirculation, be aware of what water you will use to make
the chemical solution.

If you use sea water and keep the steam in heating coils
on, there are chances of hard solid salt deposits on the
entire heating coils of the tanks.

This salt deposits could become difficult to remove.

We can just use the fresh water to make the chemical

solution to avoid any of these solutions.
But sometimes we are short of fresh water and we need to
use sea water for making the chemical solution.

In that case, there are few things you can do to avoid this.

First, stop the steam in the heating coils at least 30

minutes before stopping recirculation.

Second, rinse the tank with fresh water for 5-10 minutes
immediately after chemical recirculation.

Keeping tank coating in mind

More temperature more pressure is good for removing the

impurities and better cleaning of the tanks.

But it may not be so good for the tank coating.

The vessel must be aware of the maximum temperature

allowed by the tank coating manufacturer.

Usually, coating manufacturer will have some temperature

limitation but these limitations are for the temperature of
the cargo.
Exposure to higher temperatures for short period is
usually allowed and that does not affect the tank coating.

In any case, the tank coating manufacturer must be

consulted to have the clarity on the use of higher
temperatures than specified for tank cleaning.

Conclusion

Cleaning of the cargo tanks with palm oil as previous

cargo is a difficult task.

And if you have to clean these tanks to load wall wash

cargo, the task becomes even more difficult.

But this difficult task can become easy to a great extent if

few simple principles of tank cleaning are followed.
More pressure and more temperatures (barring few
exceptions) are one of such principle.

Choosing the correct chemical for cleaning and following

the instructions for the chemicals to be effective also
helps.