LEARNING BY TRAINING

by Arend van Campen

TANK TERMINAL SUSTAINABILITY: CAN INFORMATION THEORY HELP US REACH OUR GOALS?

THE QUESTION IS no longer: is it sustainable? But: how can we ensure non-harmful functionality?

StocExpo was back in 2023 with two separate conference streams, one exploring big picture tank storage, and the other on health and safety and the practicalities of terminal operations.

On day two of the Terminal Operations and Safety conference stream, Arend Van Campen, founder of the Tank Storage Sustainability Initiative and Tank Terminal Training spoke about how tank terminals can realistically minimise their social and environmental impact using information theory.

Here’s a taster…

It’s incredibly hard for the tank storage sector to minimise its impact on the environment in a significant and wholesale way. There are different levels of regulation, infrastructure, and desire to tackle the environmental impact of tank terminals from country to country. But even on an individual level, sustainability represents a huge challenge to terminal operators.

This is partly because most individuals understand sustainability in a very shallow way. We want more green technology, we want to reach the slightly abstract goal of Net Zero, but predicting all the knock-on effects and consequences down the line is beyond most of us.

The fact of the matter is that sustainability is an extremely complex goal with lots of moving parts. Small tweaks to complex systems can have a colossal and almost unpredictable impact; that impact can be positive, but it is just as likely to be negative if done without an eye on the bigger picture.

Tank terminal operators need to therefore conceptualise sustainability in terms of information theory. Information theory is the study of the quantification, communication and storage of information. It has been instrumental in NASA’s Voyager mission, the creation of the internet, and the viability of mobile phones. Similarly, information theory can have a profound impact on tank terminal sustainability.

With an information theory-led approach, tank terminal sustainability becomes far easier to understand and measure, and therefore far easier to manage and improve. At StocExpo 2023, Arend explained how information theory points towards a new approach to technology, seeking non-harmful functionality over simply reducing the impact of normal tank terminal processes.

With this new approach, it becomes much easier to say what is actually achievable in terms of sustainability, and also produce a roadmap to achieve it. I simply apply the two laws of thermodynamics to test functionality within the limitations of reality (Realimiteit) a.k.a. the natural boundaries of and for functionality which can only be ‘steered’ and ‘navigated’ with information. Our reality no longer consists of only matter and energy, but also of information.

World-leading experts from a variety of fields joined Arend in speaking at StocExpo in Rotterdam this March. The event also hosted hundreds of industry-leading organisations from across the world, many of whom were launching new technologies and products or announcing company updates to the international audience.

And Arend elaborated more about the natural and scientific criteria for non-harmful functionality of all man-made systems.

This is the latest in a monthly series of articles by Arend van Campen, founder of TankTerminalTraining, who can be contacted at arendvc@ tankterminaltraining.com. More information on the company’s activities can be found at www.tankterminaltraining.com.