Date:16/03/2007 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/03/16/stories/2007031606660300.htm

HPCL to track LPG supply using radio frequency identification

T.E. Raja Simhan

Chennai March 15 RFID (radio frequency identification) will soon enter Indian homes as Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) plans to use the technology to track LPG cylinders.

The plan is to initially use RFID to track cylinders within HPCL bottling plants (it has one each at Mumbai and Visakhapatnam), and later extend it to distributors and customers, according to a recent HPCL tender called to implement the RFID solution.

The technology enables storing and remote retrieval of data using devices called `RFID tags'.

HPCL plans to put these tags on about 5 lakh cylinders on an experimental basis.

Supply chain

At the bottling plant, empty cylinders received from distributors are placed on a chain conveyor. This is a hazardous area.

The cylinders are conveyed to a rotating filling equipment known as a `carousel'. During the bottling process the cylinders pass through various workstations. The RFID system will have one or more reader (or `interrogator') placed at the various workstations and one or more transponders in which communication and data transfer are achieved. A reader/interrogator station will transmit a predetermined frequency signal to one or many transponders located within a read zone, the tender said.

The transponder will be the RFID tag, which has to be installed on a carbon steel LPG cylinder. The tag should be read-only, passive tag and should operate on a frequency that does not require any statutory approvals, the tender said.

Marketing and distribution

LPG is marketed in cylinders made of carbon steel; filled cylinders are sent to dealers/distributors and onward to customers.

During the bottling process and subsequent distribution, a cylinder suffers many "abuses". It accumulates dirt, which needs to be washed off under a water jet; it is rolled on ground; it is rolled into trucks; it is subject to temperature variations from sub-zero to 60-degree Celsius. There is no palletisation of cylinders in India. There are no means to track the cylinder after it has been purchased by oil companies. Thus there is likelihood of spurious cylinders entering the supply/distribution chain, the tender said.

The RFID system should be able to track LPG cylinders and also provide a middle ware and enterprise software application to use the tracking data for various analysis, the tender said.