The agrifood and chemical industries commonly use cylindrical steel holding tanks. These are used to store processed food components, feed stocks, refinery products, general chemicals and other products, sometimes even for years.
Sky Climber was selected to develop a suspended access system to allow service and maintenance to be carried out on the inside surfaces of these cylindrical steel holding tanks. The suspended platform is used to clean, paint and repair the internal steel casing of the tanks. The challenge was to provide a platform and a suspension system that can be installed via the very small openings available to access the inside of the tank, both for the suspended platform and the suspension rig.
The platform is suspended from a two part suspension system. There is support beam that is located out is the tank with a vertical axle that is attached to a horizontal rotating suspension beam inside the tank. The rotating suspension beam allows the platform to turn 360 degrees in order to access all the vertical surfaces of the tank as well as the complete ceiling surface. The horizontal rotating suspension beam is fitted with wheels that ride on the surface of the ceiling to give a very stable working environment for the persons on the platform.
