Globalstar Europe Satellite Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Globalstar announced that leading global petrochemicals provider INEOS Oxide is deploying the Ovinto Sat tracking solution to monitor and safeguard rail and road transport of highly explosive gases across mainland Europe.
Following the staged introduction of the system over several years, INEOS Oxide has expanded the deployment and now installs Ovinto Sat sensors across its entire fleet of tank containers and rail cars, a total of approximately 700 devices to date.
Globalstar satellite communication at the heart of Ovinto Sat enables INEOS Oxide to know the exact location and status of every tank and rail car, continuously and in real time as they traverse the continent, even when beyond the reach of GSM mobile networks. This regular, reliable dataflow empowers INEOS Oxide and its supply chain partners to make speedy, well-informed business decisions about each delivery and be alerted to any changes in container/car environmental conditions that might affect the shipment.
“We are extremely pleased with the performance of Ovinto Sat,” says Business Safety, Health & Environmental (SHE) Manager at INEOS, Patrick De Block. “Ovinto Sat’s innovative and powerful tracking platform helps our business in so many ways, the most important of which is ensuring the safe conveyance of our products.”
“There are other solutions out there, but we know that ATEX-certified Ovinto Sat, with its reach and constancy enabled by Globalstar’s satellite technology, is the ideal solution for INEOS Oxide,” De Block added.
Two of the main products which INEOS Oxide transports are Ethylene Oxide and Propylene Oxide, primarily used to manufacture products for the following industries and applications: Agrochemicals, Construction, Pharmaceuticals & Personal Care, Solvents and Inks, Surfactants and detergents. Both chemicals are highly explosive, flammable and carcinogenic to humans and animals.
Ensuring safety for all stakeholders and public
When it comes to transporting such volatile materials safely, says De Block, “we need to know where our assets are, and what their internal temperature is. Ovinto Sat provides this and at the same time is helping us to optimise our systems.”
This solution reduces accident risk in transportation by monitoring the condition of the chemicals in each rail car and tank while providing valuable shipment information for the supply chain. The essential parameter for the safe transport of these hazardous products is temperature. After evaluating several alternatives in the marketplace, INEOS Oxide decided to deploy Ovinto’s PT1000 solution that monitors the surface temperature of the tank’s or rail car’s contents.
In the event of an emergency, Ovinto Sat can provide stakeholders and public authorities with a detailed understanding of the tank’s or rail car’s location and conditions.
Critically, thanks to satellite technology, all stakeholders can be confident that IoT transmissions from the tanks and cars are reliable, ubiquitous and uninterrupted. This ensures the very highest level of safety, benefitting and protecting supply chain partners, infrastructure authorities, and rail and road users.
Multiple operational benefits
Ovinto Sat provides myriad operational benefits. This IoT-empowered solution gives INEOS Oxide instant updates about whether a rail tank car has been loaded or unloaded or is ready to be redeployed. This helps INEOS Oxide enhance return on investment and optimisation of assets.
The company uses the system to set up geofences around customer locations. INEOS Oxide can provide granular detail on car or tank temperature alongside delivery logistics as the shipment nears its destination.
“We are now able to harvest so much data, we can make informed predictions regarding temperature fluctuation, and any necessary requirement for refrigeration, as our shipments move across countries; this digital information is really valuable for both our operations and continuous assurance of safety,” De Block notes.
Ovinto Sat is built around Globalstar’s low power STX3 chipset, the smallest satellite transmitter of its kind on the market. Since it’s battery powered, customers can monitor hazardous materials in unpowered environments such as rail cars and tanks. Because of its very low power consumption, the Ovinto Sat battery can last up to eight years.
Frederick Ronse, Ovinto CEO, commented: “With our ongoing engineering enhancements, we will continue to help INEOS Oxide reduce risk, increase the safety of its cars and tanks, and enhance supply chain decision-making. Globalstar technology is our communications core due to its ubiquitous reach, reliability and power efficiency compared to GSM.”
“The need for reliable, resilient connectivity is particularly acute when transporting potentially hazardous materials. With no GSM signal over many areas of continental Europe, satellite is the only reliable way of communicating, and we are proud to collaborate with Ovinto to support INEOS,” commented Mark O’Connell, General Manager at Globalstar EMEA & APAC.
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