Construction of an economic blanket belt oil skimmer

Abstract

In this era of modern civilization, liquid fuel transport is mandatory around the world. But there has been several oil spilling accidents around the world and their negative effects are against all the living elements. In the last decades Bangladesh face such problem randomly in sea area and as well as in the river side damaging a large number of livings alongside the river having a badly effect on the entire ecology. The local residents collect the spilled oil manually. The system is less efficient, slow and health hazardous. Belt Oil skimmers using Polymer, Teflon, Elastomer, Corrosion Resistant Steel materials belt are widely used for recovery of this oil. However, they are costly and unavailable. In this work a low cost simple blanket belt skimmer device by using locally available equipment that will be capable to absorb the spilled oil rapidly from river water that is filled with animal and plant waste. After constructing such oil skimmer, the performance is evaluated that accomplish two types of oil having different physical properties. Experimental analysis gives around 190 litre/hour of Sample-1 oil whereas absorption rate for the Sample-2 oil is around 253 litre/hour for the constructed device with minimum cost compare to the other conventional belt oil skimmer.