Technological and production aspects for different vapours recovery plants

The European legislation concerning the abolition of polluting substances made it necessary for Italy to be compliant with other Countries standards. These other Countries have been much more organized and have had all the instruments and plans required to eliminate polluting substances created by man work. The analysis for a vapour recovery unit (VRU) is a clear example of how oil companies always try to have an economical feed back even when forced by the law to act in a certain way. Italy started facing the issue of recovering vapours only after the introduction, on the market, of lead-free petrol. This kind of petrol contains a wide variety of additives and aromatic substances among which is benzene, that coul all be potentially dangerous for human health. The issues of benzene and industrial pollution have been faced in a confusing and approssimate way. At first the approach was to impose very strict regulation and to apply it in a very short time, later on the approach changed. The law was meant to help different subjects to be compliant with the requirements and to tolerate possible delays. The Italian legislation should have followed the European guidelines in the subject, but never specified the approach that had to be taken and the deadlines that had to be respected. In this case we can talk both of a legislative confusion and of a general misunderstanding on the production level. The Italian oil industry has two very different and important aspects to it. On one hand there are small-medium sized producers that still aren’t compliant with the laws. Most of the times this producers are not really interested in respecting the directives or they try to postpone the expences necessary for being compliant. On the other hand, the big companies have earned experience with the same kind of plants located abroad. Relying on this experience big companies have provided with getting technically advanced and idoneous plants. This companies try to balance the costs with earnings, in order to cover up, even if partially, the expences for the investment.