Robot vacuums up leftovers
Successful naphtha tank cleaning at BASF
The tank has a total diameter of 39 metres
is the diameter of the tank in which BASF Ludwigshafen stores naphtha.
stores naphtha. Crude petrol is one of the
one of the most important raw materials in the petrochemical industry. The
tank, surrounded by a concrete shell and accessible
through two manholes that are only 60 centimetres in
diameter, had to be emptied and cleaned in the spring of 2021
to be emptied and cleaned for maintenance work.
Lobbe Industrieservice planned and coordinated the
project and once again relied on the
cooperation with ST-Cleaning.
The liquid residues were to be sucked up, a maximum
cleaning with the robot was not planned.
was not planned. The reason for this is that
the additional water during high-pressure cleaning
increases the volume of the production residues and thus
and thus a higher amount of material has to be disposed of.
to be disposed of. For the automated extraction system, the
team set up some equipment directly in front of the
in front of the tank. A combustion chamber for flaring the
flaring of the naphtha outgassings, the control container
for the tank robot and the suction vehicles
from Lobbe.
After its use, the tank robot is thoroughly cleaned.
After clearing the tank, the team installed a flange at an open manhole, from which the gases were extracted via negative pressure and fed to the combustion chamber. On the opposite side, the second step was to insert the pre-assembled tank robot from ST Cleaning into the tank. To do this, a crane first lifted the robot into the annular space onto the working platform set up in front of the manhole. From here, the robot rolled down a ramp into the tank.
The robot's movements are controlled from the outside in the control centre by joystick - under visual control at all times. The direction of travel and speed can be infinitely adjusted here. The product residues sucked up by the robot were fed directly into Lobbe's industrial suction hoist, while the gaseous vapours were fed into the flare unit and immediately incinerated. A small surprise awaited the Lobbe team: several pipelines run right in the middle of the tank, which were not known - because a construction drawing of the 50-year-old tank was not available.
For this reason, the team on site, in consultation with the client, installed a high pressure lance to flush out the remaining product residues. By emptying the tank before starting the work, the floating roof rested on the approximately 100 supports at a height of two metres. After the fine cleaning inside the tank has been completed, Lobbe will also decoat the roof in a further work order and separate the lead-based paint for this purpose. With a total of seven employees working in two shifts, a semi-trailer suction truck and a water ring pump, Lobbe was able to complete this automated cleaning job to the customer's complete satisfaction within one week.
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