Chevron Cape Town Refinery

Project Manager

Chevron Refinery & Mackenzie Hoy Consulting Engineers

Project Expertise

Environmental Noise Modelling and Mapping

Noise Surveying

Continuous Noise Monitoring

Computational Fluid Dynamic Modelling

The Project

We embarked on a large scale noise monitoring and survey project with Chevron for their Cape Town Refinery between 2007 and 2008. The project included the installation, maintenance and result compilation for several long-term noise monitoring stations. We also conducted a noise survey of the entire refinery plant with over 1000 individual measurements and included in these measurements were stack top measurements using a crane with a 70 m reach to lift our sound measurement instrumentation above the stack-top (a definite first for stack-top measurements in South Africa).

The measurements were used to build one of the most detailed and sophisticated noise models created on the African Continent. The accuracy of the model and subsequent noise contour maps was near to 98% (making it extremely accurate in terms of noise models and maps). The noise models also took into account metrological conditions such as wind direction, speed and temperature as the effect of inversion layers was a large part of the study.

The result of the entire study was detailed noise maps which correlated perfectly with all measurement data to give ourselves and the refinery a very good understanding of noise propagation form the refinery along with the effect of metrological conditions on the noise propagation.