US 6,439,252 B1Granted

Liquid de-icer production apparatus and method

AssigneeVaritech Industries, Inc.

InventorEdward L. Kephart

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Abstract

An apparatus and method for automatically producing a desired specific gravity of a salt solution used for deicing highways. Highway departments can produce a high volume of salt solution of a desired specific gravity by a machine that automatically feeds salt and water into a hopper tank to produce brine, then automatically measures and adjusts the specific gravity of the brine by adding greater or lesser amounts of fresh water to the brine removed from the hopper tank. The salt added to the hopper tank contains impurities, which are removed by self-cleaning strainers. The sediment so removed flows to a trash tank. Sediment in the trash tank settles to the bottom thereof and the liquid collected is filtered by another set of self-cleaning strainers such that liquid from the trash tank can be sent to the hopper tank. The device automatically records the specific gravity of the solution produced.

Claims12

Dependent claims

An apparatus for producing de-icing salt solution comprising:

a hopper tank in which water and salt are mixed to form a salt solution,
a pump for pumping the salt solution from the hopper tank in a first pipe,
a fresh water pipe having an adjustable valve for supplying fresh water to the first pipe,
a mixer for mixing the fresh water from the fresh water pipe and the salt solution from the first pipe, connected to a second pipe for transporting the fresh water salt solution mixture,
a specific gravity measuring device and a temperature measuring device for automatically measuring the specific gravity and temperature of the fresh water salt solution mixture in the second pipe, and a means for automatically adjusting the adjustable valve to add more fresh water if the specific gravity in the specific gravity measuring device is too high for the temperature measured and for automatically adjusting the adjustable valve to add less fresh water if the specific gravity in the specific gravity measuring device is too low for the temperature measured, such that the resulting salt solution in the second pipe has a desired specific gravity and the second pipe is connected to a storage tank for the storage of the desired specific gravity saline solution.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.