Case Study: Rubis Terminal
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Rubis Terminal Continues to Reduce Emissions & Energy Cost with Full Conversion to Dialight LEDs
Motivated by its highly successful installation of Dialight industrial LED lighting at its brand-new terminal in 2016, the Rubis Group Rotterdam Terminal has committed to full conversion to LED lighting throughout its facility. So far, the company has seen reductions in emissions and energy costs, as well as long-term fixture reliability, less maintenance and improvements in visibility and safety.
Dialight: A Proven Winner
In gas and oil facilities, safe, effective and reliable lighting is a top priority. In addition to fixtures that meet hazardous certification requirements, facilities need dependable lighting that can withstand the harsh vibration and corrosive environment in order to provide a safer environment for workers. For Rubis Terminal, efficiency and sustainability are also primary concerns with both corporate and governmental mandates requiring energy-efficient and low-emission operations.
To meet those needs, when Rubis constructed the new Terminal II at its Rotterdam facility in 2016 (to learn more, see previous case study), the company opted for site-wide installation of Dialight’s ATEX-certified industrial LEDs. That decision has paid off in clear, measurable benefits, including:
- Maintenance-free lighting that saves up to 100,000 Euros annually, backed by Dialight’s industry-leading 10 year warranty.
- Superior performance, reliability, and corrosion resistance even in the harsh North Sea conditions.
- Up to 60% reduction in lighting energy consumption and cost.
- Exceptional sustainability, achieving zero-emission operations to meet both company and governmental environmental requirements.
“Those original Dialight fixtures are still in place and continue to deliver the same quality and performance as the day they were installed,” said Stephan Cappon, E&I Maintenance Supervisor with Rubis Terminal. “We’ve seen no degradation of the light quality or lumen output, and aside from a little cleaning now and then, they’ve required virtually no maintenance.”
Since that initial installation, Rubis officials have been pleased with Dialight’s fixture performance and savings that it only made sense to retrofit Terminal I and the entire facility.
‘Like Night and Day’
Recently, Rubis faced a series of converging challenges that created a new sense of urgency for its continued lighting upgrade. The existing lights—mostly T8 or tube fluorescents—were extremely prone to failure due to salt spray and vibration, requiring replacement every six to 10 months. Because many were mounted in difficult-to-reach locations, each maintenance episode required scaffold-building, putting workers at risk and costing a lot of time and money in labor.
At the Terminal I harbor site; corrosive salt spray weakened the legacy lighting fixtures to the point of failure very quickly. “With the salt spray, it’s pretty much the worst possible conditions you can imagine there for conventional lights,” Cappon said. “Just opening the fixture to change a bulb would cause the entire thing to fall completely apart, requiring a complete fixture replacement.”
Complicating matters, The Netherlands has recently banned production and use of fluorescent TL lighting in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which made replacing the bulbs and fixtures extremely difficult, if not impossible. This issue, contrasted against the worry-free, low-cost and high-visibility of Dialight fixtures at Terminal II, made the choice to complete the site-wide conversion a no-brainer.
Dialight Proves Successful Once Again
Spurred on by these incentives, Rubis has just completed Phase 2 of the retrofit at Terminal I with over 180 new fixtures. Throughout the process, the installation has been smooth and simple—a huge advantage considering the skilled labor shortage that has limited contractors’ time and resources.
“Our contractors love that the Dialight fixtures offer various mounting options and flexibility,” Cappon said. “The fixtures are easy to pre-wire and install on site which makes it much faster and easier, especially considering many areas are tough to reach.”
Because of the Dialight fixtures’ outstanding light output and exposure, Rubis was able to reduce the number of fixtures needed to illuminate the same space. In many areas, particularly the truck/train loading station and tank pits, the staff has seen major improvement in visibility, which creates a much safer working environment.
Rubis Terminal’s progress toward zero-emission operations, including the use of Dialight high-efficiency fixtures, even earned the company The Terminal Innovation Award at the 5th Global Tank Storage Awards during 2022 StocExpo.
“The lighting performance, the low maintenance, sustainability, ease of installation and just the entire process of working with the Dialight team made them the only real choice for our facility,” Cappon said. “Because of this success, our corporate office has given us the encouragement, resources and budget to move forward, as we now have plans to complete our entire plant conversion to Dialight this year.”
To learn more about Dialight’s leading-edge industrial LED lighting solutions for terminal and petrochemical applications, visit www.dialight.com.