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US 4,289,586 AGranted
Solvent recovery method
AssigneeFinishing Equipment, Inc.
InventorWinston E. Sabatka
Life of this patent
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AssigneeFinishing Equipment, Inc.
InventorWinston E. Sabatka
Estimating the term…
A dirty or otherwise contaminated volatile solvent or other treatment fluid including relatively more volatile non-flammable and relatively less volatile flammable constituents is recovered or reclaimed by boiling it off from its impurities. As the remainder is concentrated, the evaporated vapor becomes increasingly flammable. In a work process, a treatment tank is used for chemically treating work pieces in a volatile treatment fluid which has a liquid phase and a relatively non-flammable heavier-than-air vapor phase. In this process, heat energy is added to the fluid to maintain the upper vapor phase surface at a substantial distance above the upper liquid phase surface in the tank. When the treatment fluid becomes sufficiently contaminated with dirt introduced by the work pieces or otherwise, it must be removed from the tank and replaced with clean treatment fluid. The invention involves reclaiming the used volatile treatment fluid by confining it in a closed boiling vessel and boiling it off through a conduit back into the vapor phase of the fresh fluid in an active operating treatment tank to immediately combine the increasingly flammable evaporated vapors into the relatively non-flammable treatment fluid vapor in the treatment tank where the flammable constituents of those vapors will be condensed to join the liquid phase of the fresh fluid in the treatment tank.
A method of safely removing from a closed boiling vessel most of a first volatile fluid having at least some volatile constituents which are flammable in vapor phase from a mixture of such fluid and not so volatile constituents in said vessel including the steps of:
A method of safely removing from a closed boiling vessel most of a first volatile solution including at least a first volatile fluid which is non-flammable in vapor phase and at least a second volatile fluid which is flammable in vapor phase and has a relatively higher boiling point than that of the first fluid from a mixture of said first and second fluids and not so volatile constituents in said vessel including the steps of:
In association with a first volatile solution existing in both a liquid and a vapor phase in an open top treatment tank to perform an industrial process, said solution including a first volatile, flammable fluid and a second more volatile, non-flammable fluid;
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.