Cleaning and liquid contact with solids – Processes – Including regeneration – purification – recovery or separation...
Patent
1996-10-15
1998-10-27
Morgan, Kriellion S.
Cleaning and liquid contact with solids
Processes
Including regeneration, purification, recovery or separation...
210221, 210522, B08B 704, B01D 1200
Patent
active
058273735
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND
Discharge from automobile washing has been and is a big environment problem. This is especially true of automatic automobile washing machines.
Beside the obvious action, to change the composition of the detergents and make them more environmentally tolerable, advanced technics such as micro-flotation, membrane filtration and biological beds have been proposed. See IVL-report A92192A, 1992 11 27| Pilot plants have been built and the results have at least in part been very good. However, the costs of these pilot plants have been too high to make a more common use of those methods possible. Those methods also imply that valuable detergent chemicals cannot be re-used but have to be disposed of or destructed as environmentally dangerous wastes. Economic incentive to maintain optimal functioning of these plants is also lacking.
The inventor has already tested a cheap and uncomplicated method, where emulsion breaking and precipitation of heavy metals in the existing oil separators have been fundamental themes. See Swedish patent no 9201428-1| Here too the results have been good. In this case the cost picture is completely different from that of those high tech solutions mentioned above. However, here too the possibilities of direct reuse of the wash solution are very limited. The high content of oil and suspended material make reuse, for anything other than washing of automobile chassis, impossible.
It has been found that even if breaking and precipitation often function well it may happen that the agglomerates formed become so small that the limited time available in a standard size oil separator is insufficient for a satisfactory separation of oil and heavy metals. See Fakta om Avloppsvatten fran Biltvattar, Stockholm Vatten, Ragnsells, Shell, July 1993| The point of view of sewage treatment people is that safeguards are needed to secure that breaking and precipitation are functioning under all circumstances. In the above mentioned report filtration is proposed to reduce discharge and establish increased security.
To the chemist it is well known that filtration of metal sulphide and metal hydroxide precipitates is problematic due to their high water content and colloidal state. The problems become still worse when tensides and emulsified oils are present. Chemical emulsion breakers usually bind the filter media together and make cleaning by back flushing impossible.
The inventor has taken on the task of further developement of the breaking and precipitation system and adapting it to reuse of the wash water for the entire wash process, i.e also for the cleaning of paint, bright metal and glass surfaces, in short the entire automobile. The new system has been tested and is showing even better results than expected. The results can be summarized as follows: of contaminates than in earlier common processes, with corresponding reduction of the waste water that must be handled, washing machines, especially as the reduction of the water and chemical consumption is so large that the investment pays for itself quickly, of a final rinsing made with fresh water.
The invention exhibits a row of characteristics that have not earlier been possible to combine into a cohesive system. The effect of the system in full is substantially greater than what could be expected with respect to the known effects of the components.
Rapid separation of oils and suspended material is facilitated by adjustment between the detergents and the breaking and precipitating agents. The beat results have been obtained with detergents as in the Swedish patents no 9002608-9 and 9003599-9, which contain cationic tenside, and ortophosphate based breaking and precipitating agent by the Swedish patents no 9101290-6 and 9201428-1. But other tenside mixtures and breaking and precipitating agents may be used too. The tenside mixture should contain at lest a certain fraction of cationic tenside and the breaking and precipitating agent should be inorganic and multivalently anionic, i.e. that the anions should have at least two negative charges.
The
REFERENCES:
patent: Re30793 (1981-11-01), Dunkers
patent: 4144170 (1979-03-01), Dunkers
patent: 4820450 (1989-04-01), Wile et al.
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