James Clifford Lewis of Tomball received U.S. Patent 8,097,152 for “Apparatus for Removal of Oil from Ice.”

Texas Business Patent Of The Day:  Despite being a resident of a state known for dust and recording breaking heat and droughts, a Texas man has developed a way to remove oil from sea ice.

James Clifford Lewis of Tomball received U.S. Patent 8,097,152 for “Apparatus for Removal of Oil from Ice.”

Lewis filed for the patent on January 29, 2009.

Lewis’ invention is an apparatus for environmental remediation. More particularly, it relates to devices for separating oil from oil-contaminated sea ice, according to the patent document.

Lewis’ ice cleaning system may be mounted on a barge or similar vessel. A barge with ice intake units on its aft end may be pushed stern first by a tugboat through a fairway having blocks of oil-contaminated ice floating therein to remove the oil from the ice.

Ice blocks enter crusher units where they are broken up and mixed with recycled water to form an ice/water slurry which is lifted by an Archimedes screw and propelled through conduits to melting units.

The ice is melted in the melting units and the oil/water output from the melting units is conveyed via conduits to surge tank.

A pump in fluid communication with the surge tank transfers the oil/water mixture to a separator unit such as a hydrocyclone. Oil exiting the separator unit may be conveyed to a holding tank for subsequent offloading and disposal.

Relatively warm water exits the separator and enters a recycle line and is returned to the crusher units to provide a deicing spray and to form a portion of the slurry conveyed to the melting unit(s). Excess recycle water (now substantially free of oil) is simply returned to the sea through the open ends of the crusher unit(s).

The crusher units may be modular in design such that they may be mounted adjacent to one another on the bow or stern of a vessel. In this way, the apparatus of the present invention may be fitted to various barges having differing beams.

The intake section of the crusher unit comprises a generally scoop-shaped structure formed by a pair of opposing, generally planar, side walls connected by a grating 4 and a contoured rear wall. The grating may comprise an array of generally vertical, spaced-apart plates having slots between adjacent plates into which ice to be broken by crusher teeth on a rotating drum.

A spray bar sprays relatively warm, recycled water from the separator unit onto the crusher drum and intake chute to deice the apparatus and help form a water/ice slurry that may be more easily conveyed to the melting unit(s) by an auger-type pump. A flex joint or flexible segment in the slurry conduit may be provided in order to allow the intake section of the crusher unit to be raised or lowered by hydraulic cylinders.