JPH0461707B2 - - Google Patents

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] This invention is mainly applicable to collecting and cleaning sludge accumulated at the bottom of heavy oil tanks and crude oil tanks installed at power plants and oil storage bases. Regarding the equipment used.

[Prior art and its problems] If a large oil tank were to crack and leak oil, it would cause unimaginable damage. For this reason, every 5 to 10 years, oil tanks should be thoroughly drained of the stored oil, removed from the sludge that accumulates at the bottom, and cleaned of the bottom plate to ensure that there are no cracks, corrosion, or other inconvenient areas. I'm doing an inspection. The viscosity of the sludge that accumulates at the bottom of an oil tank varies significantly depending on the type of oil and the outside temperature, ranging from almost solid to soft agar-like, and is generally fluid at room temperature. In most cases, there is no.

For this reason, it is difficult to transfer using commonly used liquid pumps. There are two types of sludge: sludge that is separated as a result of some of the components contained in the oil precipitating or deteriorating, and sludge that is produced by foreign substances mixed in from the outside.

The sludge deposited in oil tanks differs depending on the type of oil, such as crude oil and heavy oil. There are two types of sludge: sludge containing a large amount of wax and emulsion-based sludge produced by mixing seawater or fresh water, and hard sludge cannot be easily discharged.

For this reason, in the past, without exception, a person would enter an oil tank with a scoop or a T-shaped scraper with a handle called a dragonfly, manually scrape and collect the sludge from the bottom, and collect it. The reality is that even pumps are discharging waste to the outside.

However, this work was carried out in extremely poor working conditions, and was also hard and labor-intensive. For example, over 100 tons of sludge accumulates at the bottom of an oil tank with a diameter of 40m, and it takes 10 people a week to drain it and clean the bottom. Additionally, this large oil tank only has two 70cm diameter holes for people to enter, and the inside is closed, dark, and dangerous. Moreover, it is extremely hot and filled with foul odors, making it an extremely bad work environment. It becomes hard labor.

When a person scrapes sludge from the bottom, collects it in one place, and transports it with a pump, hard sludge needs to be heated to make it pliable in order to be scraped up and pumped out. There is.
Steam, which poses no risk of explosion, is used to heat the sludge. That is, a heating coil is temporarily installed at the bottom of the tank, and a device that circulates steam inside the tank to heat the sludge is used to soften the sludge. The steam circulating in this heating device is supplied from outside the oil tank via a hose. Sludge heated with steam becomes flexible and can be transferred smoothly with a pump, but it takes considerable effort to heat a huge amount of sludge.
Furthermore, the temperature inside the closed, hot oil tank is further increased, worsening the working environment.

[Object of this invention] This invention was developed with the aim of eliminating this drawback of the conventional technology.An important object of this invention is to easily and quickly remove the sludge that accumulates at the bottom of an oil tank, and to pump it out. To provide a sludge recovery device capable of recovering sludge in a state where it can be easily pumped.

[Means for Solving Conventional Problems] The oil tank sludge recovery device of the present invention includes a frame having self-propelled wheels for moving on the bottom of the oil tank, and a frame having downward wheels in the direction of movement. It is installed at an angle to the slope, and the leading edge is located near the running surface of the self-propelled wheels, and is connected to a scraper for scraping sludge and the rear end of this scraper, so that the scraper scrapes the sludge. It is equipped with a screw conveyor that collects the sludge in an agitated state at the suction port of the pressure pump, and a pressure pump that forcibly pumps the sludge collected by the screw conveyor with a hose.

[Operations and Effects] In the sludge recovery device of the present invention, the scraper scrapes off sludge adhering to the bottom of an oil tank by moving forward with self-propelled wheels. The scraped plate-shaped sludge is sliced from the rear end by rotating fins of a screw conveyor disposed at the rear end of the scraper, stirred, and collected at the suction port of the pressure pump. Therefore, the sludge transferred to the suction port of the pressure pump is stirred and collected in a flexible state, and the sludge that is sent one after another is smoothly fed to the suction port of the pressure pump. In other words, the screw conveyor not only collects sludge in one place, but also collects sludge that cannot be transported as it is.
It is also used to adjust the viscosity to a state that makes it easy to transfer with a pressure pump.

Therefore, the sludge that has been flexibly stirred by the screw conveyor can be quickly discharged from the oil tank via the hose using the pressure pump.

Therefore, the sludge recovery device of the present invention can easily and quickly remove the sludge accumulated at the bottom of an oil tank.
In addition, it can be efficiently discharged using a pressure pump, which has the advantage of dramatically improving the efficiency of conventional, dangerous and heavy manual work.

[Preferred Embodiment] An embodiment of the present invention will be described below based on the drawings. However, the embodiments shown below are intended to exemplify a device for embodying the technical idea of the present invention, and the device of the present invention has the materials, shapes, structures, and arrangements of the component parts as shown below. It is not specific to Various modifications may be made to the device of the present invention within the scope of the claims.

Further, in this specification, numbers corresponding to the members shown in the embodiments are added to the members shown in the claims so that the claims are easy to understand. However, the members described in the claims are by no means limited to the members shown in the embodiments.

The oil tank sludge recovery device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 includes a frame 2 having self-propelled wheels 1 for moving on the bottom of the oil tank, and a frame 2 that is attached at an angle to collect sludge. a scraper 3, a screw conveyor 5 which is simply connected behind the scraper 3 and collects the sludge S scraped up by the scraper 3 in an agitated state at the suction port of the pressure pump 4; The conveyor 5 is equipped with a pressure pump that forcibly transports the collected sludge using a hose 6.

The self-propelled wheel 1 consists of a roller provided at the front and a steering wheel provided at the rear.
The rollers are connected to and driven by an air motor 7 via a chain and sprocket.

The self-propelled wheels provided at the rear are not necessarily necessary, and it is possible to make the vehicle self-propelled only by the rollers provided at the front. In this case, it is preferable to provide the rollers near the front and rear centers of gravity, or somewhat behind the center of gravity.

The device, which has rollers near the center of gravity and has good front-to-back balance, can be tilted lightly back and forth by holding a handle 17 provided at the rear of the frame 2. Therefore, by holding the handle 17, the scraper 3 at the tip can be pressed against the bottom of the tank, or the scraper 3 can be conveniently moved away from the bottom.

In addition, in a device where the roller is located somewhat in front of the center of gravity and the scraper 3 is pressed against the bottom of the tank at the beginning and end of the entire device, the scraper 3 can scrape off the sludge S by moving the handle 17 forward without lifting it. It can be used conveniently.
In this case, the pressure force of the scraper 3 on the bottom surface of the tank can be adjusted depending on the front and rear mounting positions of the rollers.

The air motor 7 is connected to a compressor (not shown) outside the oil tank via a switching valve 15, a flow rate adjustment valve (not shown), and a hose, and its rotation direction and rotation speed are adjusted. The rotation direction and speed of the roller driven by the air motor 7 are adjusted, and the forward and backward movement and speed are adjusted.

The scraper cooper 3 is inclined downward in the direction of travel so that the sludge S accumulated at the bottom of the oil tank can be scraped off by moving forward, and the tip edge 3A is attached to the self-propelled wheel 1. It is fixed to the frame 2 so as to be located near the running surface. A relatively hard rubber plate 3B is fixed to the lower surface of the tip of the scraper 3 so that it can be moved along the slightly uneven bottom surface to scrape off all the sludge. Tip edge 3 of rubber plate 3B
A is fixed in a position where it moves in contact with the bottom or moves as close as possible to the bottom surface.

Furthermore, the scraper 3 is formed on a taper that becomes wider toward the tip so that the sludge can be scraped over a wide range, and side walls 3C are provided on both sides to prevent the scraped sludge S from leaking from both sides.
is fixed.

Further, the upper surface of the slurry parr 3 is arranged so that the scraped sludge S is dispersed on both sides so that the sludge conveyance distance of the screw conveyor 5 becomes longer.In other words, the screw conveyor 5 sufficiently stirs the sludge during the conveyance. The separating plate 8 is fixed in a tapered shape so that the separation plate 8 can be opened.

The separation plate 8 is separated from the center of the tip of the scraper 3.
It extends to the sludge guide port 9 that opens on both sides of the rear end of the scraper 3 and is fixed in a vertical position.
The upper surface of the space between the two separation plates 8 is closed.

The screw conveyor 5 is connected to the sludge guide ports 9 at both ends of the scraper 3, extends in the horizontal and lateral directions, and is fixed to the frame. This screw conveyor 5 includes a cylindrical outer cylinder 10, a rotating shaft 11 coaxially and rotatably supported within the outer cylinder 10, and an air motor 12 that rotationally drives the rotating shaft 11. It consists of.

The outer cylinder 10 has openings on both sides that are connected to the sludge guide port 9 and on the back of the center where the suction port of the pressure pump 4 is connected, so that the sludge supplied to both sides is transferred to the center while stirring. do.

A spiral rotating fin 13 is fixed to the rotating shaft 11 so that the rotating shaft 11 can rotate and transfer the sludge. The rotating fins 13 are formed in a spiral shape with opposite pitches on both sides of the center so that sludge can be transferred from both sides to the center by rotating the entire rotating shaft 11.

The rotating shaft 11 is connected to an air motor 12 via a chain and a sprocket, and the rotation speed and rotation direction of the air motor 12 are adjusted by a mechanism similar to a roller. The screw conveyor 5, which can be reversed, has the advantage of being able to easily discharge foreign matter when it is sucked in.

The pressure pump 4 is disposed between the screw conveyor 5 and the self-propelled wheels, and is connected to the discharge side so as to discharge the sludge collected in the center of the screw conveyor 5 out of the oil tank using a hose 6. A discharge pipe 14 is connected to the frame 2, and the rear end of the discharge pipe 14 is extended to the rear end of the frame 2. A hose 6 is connected to the discharge pipe 14 to transfer the sludge with the hose.

As the pressure pump 4, any pump capable of transferring paste-like sludge, such as a geared pump or a diaphragm pump, can be used.

This pressure pump 4 is connected via a chain, sprocket, and gear to an motor 12 that rotationally drives the screw conveyor 5, and is driven to rotate together with the screw conveyor 5.

The pressure pump 4 transfers the collected sludge to a hose 6.
However, if the sludge has a high viscosity or a large amount of sludge is to be transferred, it is also possible to connect a pump to the hose outside the oil tank.

[How to use] Connect the sludge transfer hose to the sludge discharge pipe.
An air hose is connected to the air pipe, and an air motor is used to rotate the screw conveyor and pressure pump. In this state, another motor rotates the roller and moves it forward to scrape off the sludge from the bottom of the oil tank with a scraper. The sludge is agitated as it is transferred from both sides of the screw conveyor to the center, becomes pliable, and is sucked into the pressure pump. The pressure pump discharges the sludge out of the oil tank with a hose. The hose is long or
If the sludge has a high viscosity, connect a diaphragm pump or similar device to the hose outside the oil tank to smoothly discharge the sludge.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1 and 2 are a plan view and a side view showing an oil tank sludge recovery device showing an embodiment of the present invention. 1...Self-propelled wheel, 2...Frame, 3...Scraper, 3A...Tip edge, 3B...Rubber plate, 3
C...Side wall, 4...Pressure pump, 5...Screw conveyor, 6...Hose, 7...Air motor, 8...Separator plate, 9...Sludge guide port, 10
... Outer cylinder, 11 ... Rotating shaft, 12 ... Air motor, 13 ... Rotating fin, 14 ... Discharge pipe, 1
5...Switching valve, 16...Switching valve, 17...Handle, S...Sludge.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A frame 2 having a self-propelled wheel 1, which is attached to the frame 2 with a downward slope in the direction of travel, and whose leading edge 3A is near the running surface of the self-propelled wheel 1. A scraper 3 is located at , and is connected to the rear end of this scraper 3 to scrape up the sludge S, and the sludge S scraped up by the scraper 3 is collected at the suction port of the pressure pump 4 in an agitated state. This sludge recovery device for an oil tank is equipped with a screw conveyor 5 and a pressure pump 4 which sucks in sludge S collected by the screw conveyor 5 and forcibly conveys it through a hose 6. 2. The oil tank sludge recovery device according to claim 1, wherein the screw conveyor 5 has fins that collect the sludge S in the center. 3. The oil tank sludge recovery device according to claim 1, wherein the pressure pump 4 is a diaphragm pump.