Fuel Vapour Recovery at Servo.

[cobramania]

My local BP has been digging up the driveway for a couple of weeks, & I wondered what's going on? I went there today to fill up (all works finished), to find they had new pumps (hoses & nozzles) with a sign on the pump saying "this pump now has vapour recovery" or something along those lines. It's an environmental mandate thing in NSW, don't know about other states?

Just wondering how many other servos around now have this?

I probably looked like an idiot, but I stood checking it all out, to find how it worked. The hose is much thicker, the handle looks about the same, & the bottom of the nozzle is the same, but the top of it is now thicker & has an open end, (so the fuel delivery nozzle is like a tube within a tube). At this particular servo, the pumps used to be silent running, but now you can hear the vacuum pump running.

Apparently the recovered fuel vapours are returned to the underground tanks, & it's got me wondering, how much vapour they actually recover & what they do recover, you've paid for.
Theoretically it will condensate back in the tank & return to liquid fuel.
That means on a high turnover servo, a percentage of fuel you've paid for will be returned for them to pump again to someone else, they also won't have to buy as much fuel.
While it's probably minuscule per day, it'll add up over the year/s.

NSW info can be found here: http://www.cleartheair.nsw.gov.au/in..._recovery.aspx