Automatic Overhead Water Tank Cleaning System: A Review and an Approach

Aim of this paper is to develop a mechanical system for cleaning domestic cylindrical water tank. The mechanical system includes two main mechanisms which are rack and pinion gear mechanism and reciprocating four bar linkage mechanism. The rack and pinion arrangement is used to move whole mechanical system up and down for cleaning the cylindrical tank. The rack is fixed on the motor and the four-bar mechanism is attached to the motor shaft. PVC brushes are attached to the ends of the four-bar linkage. Four bar linkage is made in such a way that it can be adjusted according to inside diameter of the tank. When the motor is started the linkage rotates and with the help of brushes, cleaning of wall and base of tank takes place. The purpose of this project is to reduce the human efforts and to avoid the chemical influence on health of person entering the tank for cleaning. In this modern world, cleaning of overhead tanks manually is a tedious job. To overcome this we have aimed at tackling the disadvantages of cleaning overhead tanks, so an automatic system overhead tank cleaning is designed to provide high safety, high efficiency, less time for cleaning and to avoid environmental pollution problems. Purpose of this paper is to clean domestic cylindrical water tank with the help of mechatronics system. The mechatronics system consists of a grooved gear rod attached to two arms with brushes at ends. The two arms are connected to the gear rod by nut. By rotating the gear rod, the up and down motion of the two arms is achieved. The gear rod is rotated with the help of a D.C gear motor. The main grooved shaft is powered by an A.C motor. The motor and the shaft are connected by a rubber belt. The clockwise rotation of the main shaft will make the arms move and vice versa. The whole operation is controlled by a circuit consisting of relay switches, buttons, and PIC microcontroller. The number of times for the operation to repeat can be fed into the circuit. The achievement of this project is reduction of cost and manual labour because there will be harmful diseases for the person who will go inside and it will affect the health as well as the other human being who consumes water from the tank.