This invention relates to an environmentally sensitive closed-loop pressure cleaning system for cleaning surfaces.
Maintaining a clean and adequate supply of fresh water is essential to society. In many metropolitan areas, even in smaller towns, and industrial areas, the goal of an adequate supply of fresh water is seriously challenged by both higher demands for water and by the large amounts of contaminants found in waste water systems. Today many municipal and industrial waste water treatment systems operate at near peak capacity. Therefore, efforts are made to reduce the volume of water that passes through these waste water treatment systems, and to also reduce the pollutants that are introduced into these systems. Federal, State and Local Governments have attempted to improve the fresh water supply and capacity of waste water treatment systems by promulgating laws and regulations to limit the type and amount of contaminated water that enters water treatment systems via storm sewers. For example, many such laws prohibit persons from discharging water containing any hydrocarbons or other contaminants into public storm sewers. E.g., Texas Water Commission Rule 26.121; Houston City Code .sctn.47-33. These rules and regulations are applicable to all persons, including operators of car washes, service stations, and other small businesses.
Efforts to reduce storm sewer drainage volume and the amount of pollutants are particularly effective when cleaning large surface areas, such as factory floors, aircraft hangars, garage shop floors, work shop and machine shop floors, pedestrian walkways, automobile parking lots, helicopter pads, and sports stadiums. Cleaning such large surface areas can require large volumes of water, and in cleaning such surfaces, the contaminants which dislodge from the surface, together with the detergents or other cleaning agents, are discharged to the environment and the natural water supply. Additionally, when these surfaces are cleaned much of the water used may be lost through evaporation.
In order to reduce the volume of waste water and the amount of pollutants, and to comply with Federal, State and Local regulations, the industry frequently performs "pretreatment"of waste water or "recycling" of waste water. Many of these systems operate with a high pressure sprayer to clean machinery, surfaces or other equipment. The contaminated water gravity drains from the equipment or surface into a sump, or other containment area. The water is then treated by filters, chemicals and/or microorganisms before releasing the water to the waste water treatment system. These systems utilize large pieces of equipment and for this reason and because a sump is utilized, these systems are designed to clean a dedicated area. Some systems operate as "closed loop" systems wherein the water is never released for drainage to waste water treatment plants, but rather is regenerated within the system itself. These systems comprise a finite volume of water or cleaning fluid, and occasionally fluid is added to "make-up" fluid loss due to evaporation or adsorption into the equipment or surface.
However, many industries find prior art systems problematic for complying with storm drain regulations because of the expense in purchasing and maintaining a "pre-treatment" waste water system. Also, because of the large number of such surfaces, cleaning these surfaces is both physically and economically difficult with cleaning systems that are dedicated to a specific site or surface area.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a surface cleaning system which is portable, closed-loop, and operates to minimize the amount of water which is released to the environment or waste water drain system. There is also a need for a system which reduces the amount of water that escapes through evaporation, and which eliminates the amount of pollutants entering the municipal or industrial waste water system.