Hazardous Waste Handling System for Metro
ME 492-493 Project
| Students | |
Sponsor | |
Advisor |
Kareem Al-Yami
Travis Ellis
Mark Goss
Ben Samms
|
|
Metro
Tri-county Regional Government
Portland, Oregon
Industry Advisor:
Dawit Solaman
|
|
Gerald Recktenwald
Associate Professor
PSU Mechanical Engineering Department
(503) 725-4290
|
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Problem Statement
Metro administers hazardous waste collection and processing facilities
in the Portland metropolitan area. Part of the waste
stream involves unused paint. The paint is collected at sites around
the city and then shipped in five gallon pails to a reprocessing facility.
At the reprocessing facility the five gallon pails are
- Unloaded from a palette
- Transfered to a bench where they are opened
- Drained into a larger tank
- Transfered to a can crusher
Currently the handling of pails is done manually, by workers that are
dressed in fully contained hazardous materials (haz-mat) suits. Because of the weight
of the pails, and the awkwardness of working in a haz-mat suit, workers have
experienced a high number of injuries.
This project involves the analysis the current paint can handling equipment
and procedure, the development of new procedures, and the design new equipment as
necessary.
The goal of this project is to develop equipment and procedures that result
in a reduction, or ideally a complete elimination, of injuries to the
workers.
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- Find or design new lift mechanism for the five gallon buckets
- Find or design new ways of opening the buckets
A commercially available lift assist mechanism was found that is capable
of moving the five gallon paint buckets through the processing stages.
A new device was designed to punch five inch diameter holes in the
top of the cans. The design of the cutter head in the punch was
based on prototype tests performed by the student group.
A complete set of drawings for the room layout, lift assist mechanism,
and punch device were presented to Metro, along with a final report.
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