Case Study : Plastic Bumper Painting Operation
Before the painting process can begin it is normal for these plastic parts to first go through a washing process to remove dirt, debris, residue and slight oil or grease contamination. This washing process can involve many washer stages, the first stage is often a phosphoric acid wash chemical followed by many rinsing stages. Typically, the very last rinse is virgin deionized water that is sent directly to sewer or overflows to previous stages rinse stages to prevent their contamination, before going to sewer. In any situation, it is very costly to produce ultra low conductivity water and when consumption is high there was no way to recuperate this water sent to sewer.
At a European plastic parts finishing operation, an attempt to recycle this water while initially successful soon ran into problems as bio-fouling and bio-film within the pipes (and tanks that captured this run off) soon created greater problems than the cost of the wasted water. At the height of the problem, additional weekend cleaning was costing $5,000/weekend, attempting to eradicate this bio-problem only to have re-contamination the following week. SanEcoTec’s business partners were invited to review the situation.
Understanding the challenge of bio-growth and bio-film, they introduced PURE to eliminate these problems. Within a week the system was once again in control. This final rinse water can now safely be collected and pumped back to the water purification system for re-cleaning; it is then reused as virgin DI water. This saves money by re-polishing previously polished water rather than raw city water and reduces water consumption. This wise reuse of water can also mean significant savings when design and capital engineering costs ($60K-150K for various types, RO, dual train DI, of water polishing technologies dependent on volume and conductivity of incoming raw water) are considered since a high cost water purification system need only half of the typical output.
Further the use of CLEAN (surface disinfectant) as a weekend cleaning product or PURE (water conditioner – bio-fouling) dosed directly in the acid stage may eliminate the need for typical weekend power wash maintenance.
Based on the success of the use of our products on the paint side of this manufacturing operation, the plastic moulding operation also saw the opportunity to meet one of its greatest challenges. To cool the plastic parts within the moulds, process cooling water is circulated within the mould. This cooling water, though treated with chlorine could not prevent the biofouling. This fouling was responsible for poor heat transfer in general but within the moulds this fouling would cause hot spots that effected the plastic part quality.
Once again products by Huwa-San Technology were employed to ensure complete bio protection of the cooling water system.
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