A robot created by a Bengaluru start-up called Beta Tank Robotics Private Ltd. can function in oil tanks in petroleum refineries, removing hazards for people. The project was funded by OIL India Limited’s ‘Startup Nurturing, Enabling and Handholding (SNEH)’ Flagship Programme-Start-up India Fund and was incubated at IIT Guwahati in 2009.
Sludge from crude oil tanks will be cleaned by this robotic solution and pumped out of the tank. These robots can easily pass under the heating coils because of their extremely low height. The robot collects and crushes the sludge at the bottom of the tank, then pumps it out.
The robot is powered and controlled by hydraulic power. An integrated tail hose houses the complete set of hydraulic hoses and the sludge removal hose. It’s well outside the tank where the hydraulic power pack system is situated. These robots move within the tanks, spreading and raising their arms as they water-wash the interiors, even stripping the washings. This simplifies, eliminates risk, and expedites the process of gas-freeing tanks.
The specialised robot functions similarly to a hoover cleaner and can move from one taker to another. In addition to the potential for explosion, the gas inside the tanks is poisonous. Human risk will be eliminated by this innovation.
Standard robots with thermo-motors and electronics cannot be placed inside the tanks to prevent the risk of fire. Thus, the exposure to fire risk may be decreased by using hydraulics to control and power these robotic streams.
Several hundred robots may be needed in India. The robot’s closest competitor is an expensive European model that is not as small as the Indian model.
In the oil and natural gas sector, robots are extremely useful, especially in environments where human entry presents serious risks. When large oil companies enter petroleum tanks with people, they run the risk of legal trouble and damage to their reputation. Robots created by Beta Tank assist in reducing these risks and speeding up turnaround and downtime.
Beta Tank has developed the following two solutions:
- A robot designed to remove sludge from the bottom of a crude oil tank by sweeping it and pumping it to a container outside the tank. These robots stand out from their counterparts in the world in three different ways.
- A robot to strip and water wash petrol pump tanks at retail outlets: These robots are able to move within the tank, raise and spread their arms, and perform water washing operations on the tanks, even removing the washings. This makes it simple, safe, and reasonably quick to release the gas from these tanks.
The founder of Beta Tank, Captain D Chandrasekhar, had the idea to build this robot in 1995 while working as a ship’s officer and managing certain tank operations inside the ship’s oil tanks. In his opinion, the best way to operate in such a setting was through robotics.
It took nearly three decades for that dream to come true, but in 2019 M/s OIL offered funding and incubation to build this robot. Captain Chandrasekhar expressed great confidence in the robot’s technological prowess and revealed that it is able to navigate under the heating coils present in many tanks due to its small size and low height. It is a robot with a pump. The promoter is adamant that a hoover truck cannot remove such thick sludge from outside; instead, it must be moved over great distances using pump discharge pressure. The umbilicals are tidily stored on castors inside a ‘tail hose’. It is important to take care of the heavy umbilicals when working in such large tanks.
Tank oil cleaning is one of those tedious, hazardous, and unclean tasks that can now be delegated to robots. The human operator no longer has to risk exposure to dangerous chemicals by simply watching the cleaning process from the outside. Even though the products were created for the oil industry, they can be used to clean chemical tanks, sewage treatment plants, food processing tanks, and other similar facilities with a few minor adjustments.
Products created by Beta Tank will be far less expensive than competing products on the market and come with a number of other advantageous features.
The robots are currently going through rigorous safety inspections in order to operate in IECX/ATEX Zone 0, which is the strictest standard in the petroleum sector. In February 2023, Beta Tank took home the Best Start-up Award from the India Energy Week Summit in Bengaluru. Since this summit, the company has been inundated with requests for various robotic applications related to the oil industry by various players, and it has been developing these applications.
