Marine biological cleaning robot Scientists from Zhejiang University have developed a marine organism specially used for cleaning steel pipes of oil drilling platforms, and successfully tested it in Pinghu oil and gas field in the East China Sea.

So how does this ocean cleaning robot work?

Stick firmly to the pipe wall, spray water full of bubbles, and the accumulated shell is swept away.

The water spray device is a new design, which produces a large number of cavitation bubbles by making water flow through the cavitation nozzle at high speed. Cavitation bubbles are jetted to the surface to be cleaned with the jet, and burst in a narrow area to produce micro-jet, thus removing surface attachments.

According to China News Network, in the first sea trial, the cleaning speed of the marine biological cleaning robot reached 2 1.7m 2/ hour, and the cleaning water pressure was 20 MPa, which was much lower than the manual cleaning water pressure of 70 MPa, but it could achieve the same cleaning effect. The robot adopts cavitation jet, catheter adaptation, visual navigation control and other technologies. Moreover, it has an adaptive permanent magnet adsorption module, which can realize stable adsorption on the surface of steel pipes with different diameters and can span between pipes with different diameters.

According to the Science and Technology Daily, the marine biological cleaning robot has improved the simplicity and operability of offshore operations, and can completely replace divers for underwater marine biological cleaning. The robot can be widely used in ship cleaning, bridge cleaning and other fields. In addition, because the robot is amphibious, other high-altitude dangerous operations on the platform, such as painting and inspection, can also be completed by the robot.