1A Goodsons Mews, Wellington Street, Thame, OX9 3BX  

Oil Industry

Case Study    

Helping an Oil Industry Business Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

The IBC WashStation paid for itself immediately

The Client

Our client is a company within the Oil industry that wants to change its approach to recycling storage IBCs and settling tanks.

The Challenge

The client’s process includes two distinct types of tanks that need cleaning: standard 1000L IBCs for product storage and a 1000L Duramaxx settling tank.

However, manually cleaning these containers was not viable, taking approximately 30 minutes per IBC and posing significant health and safety risks due to the hazardous stored product. Because of this, the client had been discarding each IBC after a single use. The settling tank faces similar challenges, with high-viscosity hazardous product settling at the bottom of the vessel. With an inventory of over 80 IBCs for this one client, providing a solution that will allow them to re-use IBC’s will not only improve profit margins, it will lead to a more sustainable future for oil. 

Improve Profit_Margins

Improved
Product Margins 

Operate More Sustainably

Operating More Sustainably

Reduce Health &_Safety Risks

Reduced Health & Safety Risks

The Solution

To solve these issues, we introduced a fully automated IBC Wash Station that could clean both the IBC storage containers and settling tanks without high labour in a safe environment. 

The IBC is a plug and play system which during the trial was able to clean the IBC Tank in 5 minutes. It offers a high impact clean of the internal surfaces with a repeatable and reliable 360° cleaning pattern. Due to the mounting angle of the cleaning head within the IBC, the system allows the cleaning jets to clean up into the roof of the Tank in those hard-to-reach top corners. The system also has three pre-set cycle times which allows the operative to set the machine running and return once the clean has been completed.

This dramatically reduces labour costs and frees up workers to perform tasks elsewhere, while also reducing water usage/costs. The cleaned IBCs could then be reused, reducing the cost of disposing of the IBCs and the impact on the environment. During the trial it was estimated that not having to discard the IBCs after every use would save the client approximately £100 per IBC. Based on their enquiry this would save over £8,500. It was soon apparent that the WashStation offered an immediate payback in just this first order.

Before

Before (1)

After

After-5-Minutes

IBC WashStation

A complete all-in-one system utilising patented rotary impingement technology designed to blast residue from the IBC/tote interior, in a precise, global indexing pattern. This high impact cleaning technology ensures the entire tote interior is thoroughly cleaned in the most efficient manner, utilising the least amount of resources, including: time, energy, cleaning chemicals, and water. 

Wash Station

The Results

The implementation of the WashStation yielded significant results.

  • ~£100 saved per IBC, or £8,500 immediately, paying back the wash station
  • Cleaning times reduced from 30 minutes per IBC to just 5