LPG plant to come up near Tirunelveli will have more storage facility

New LPG bottling plant to be established on 40 acres of SIPCOT land in Tirunelveli

How it is done: School students being taken on a tour through the LPG bottling plant at Mattapparai in Dindigul district on Thursday.

Following rise in Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) consumption, Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) plans to commission a new bottling plant on 40 acres of SIPCOT land in Tirunelveli .

It will start functioning in a couple of months after statutory clearance. It will share the load of Madurai plant and cater to consumers in Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Kanniyakumari districts. IOCL was expanding its storage and bottling facilities to meet the growing demand in Tamil Nadu, said K.S. Shankar, DGM (LPG), Tamil Nadu

The oil company also plans to augment its storage at its Madurai plant by 1,800 Metric Tonnes (MT). The plant already has a mounded storage facility with a capacity to store 900 MT of LPG in three bullets.

The IOC took a group of students and journalists to its Madurai plant at Mattaparai in Dindigul district on Thursday. Spread over 37 acres, the plant caters to consumers in the six districts of Madurai, Dindigul, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Kanniyakumari.

Explaining the expansion plans, D. Murali, Deputy General Manager of the plant, said, “We have planned to revamp the entire LPG filling set-up with a new electronic carousel of 24 LPG filling points in addition to the existing carousel that churns out 1,400 cylinders per hour.”“The plant fills 19,000 cylinders and despatches 65 trucks a day, totalling 60,000 MT per annum. In 2018-19, the plant bottled 93,000 MT, almost 145% of its capacity. This shows the increase in demand,” he said.

The Madurai plant was commissioned in 1999 and was the first to adopt the mound storage and carousel filling facilities, said M. Thiagarajan, Manager (LPG), Madurai. “The plant uses state-of-the art automation technology, ensuring efficiency in operations and optimum safety without human intervention,” he said.

A fire drill was also showcased in which automated water canons maintained at a high pressure and fire siren became operational the moment a leakage or fire was detected. The electricity supply to the plant also got tripped automatically. The entire system of safety, storage and process were monitored from an integrated control room.

R. Chidambaram, GM, Corporate Communications, and A. Rajaram, Chief Divisional Manager, gave a presentation on the plant and its features.