Filtration unit helps resin producer

London -- Neville Chemical Co. a small independent manufacturer of hydrocarbon resins, has achieved significant productivity and safety gains following its installation of a filtration system at its Anaheim, California.

Neville Chemical competes with several major Asian producers in the supply of hydrocarbon resins for applications such as printing inks, adhesives and various coatings, according to Rob Lonergan, general manager of the Anaheim plant.

“With all of the competitive forces out there, productivity and safety are essential to our survival. Of course, given cost and labor issues plaguing the California manufacturing environment today, those challenges have become even more critical here,” said Lonergan.

Engineers at the company decided that updating its resin filtration system with a state-of-the-art system on the finished goods line would improve productivity and reduce waste. This, said Lonergan, “not only enabled us to operate leaner through improved productivity and reduced waste, but also led us to vastly reduce the health and safety hazards that were present with our old system.”

The company had previously used a range of systems to filter impurities from its finished resin products. While filter bags performed well in removing impurities from resin, they were costly and required continual changing – a difficult procedure that interrupted production and was also potentially hazardous.

Neville Chemical’s bag filters in question were located on the molten resin line, where the resin material is heated to 200-260 degrees C in order to permit flow. After being filtered, the resin goes through a flaking process and becomes solidified and then packaged.

The combination of the heat of the resin and build-up of contaminants causes filtration bags to load up and decompose to the point that they have to be changed at regular intervals. “Unfortunately, those intervals require stopping resin product flow before a batch is complete,” said Lonergan.

Due to the heat and “stickiness” of the resin running through Neville Chemical’s line, changing filter bags was difficult, messy and potentially dangerous. “Each filter bag was about three-feet long, and they became quite cumbersome when full. If the person changing the bags spilled resin on himself, the molten resin would stick and possibly burn him,” added Lonergan.

To eliminate these problems, Neville Chemical replaced that bag filter system with an Eco Filter system from Russell Finex. The self-cleaning filter system integrates directly into the pipeline and eliminates the need to change filtration bags. A spiral wiper design keeps the filter element continuously clean to maintain its efficiency.

The enclosed filter system is designed to prevent pollutants from outside the system from contaminating the product, and protect operators from harmful fumes and spillage. The system also continuously monitors the filtration unit to ensure efficient operation without operator involvement.

At Neville Chemical, this resulted in substantial savings of both downtime and labour. The filter also has a special valve to allow sampling of freshly filtered material, so the quality of the resin can easily be monitored without interrupting production.

The unit's reusable filter element eliminates the need to replace and dispose of messy bags or cartridges. These self-cleaning filters fit neatly into existing production lines, in many instances adding significant capacity without requiring excessive space. Most users also see substantial improvement in product purity as well as throughput and waste elimination.

The investment, said Lonergan: "has paid for itself in terms of productivity and waste elimination. But perhaps the health and safety benefits have saved us even more. We’re safer now, and our workers love the Eco Filter system because it eliminates all those physical demands. It dumps all the junk directly into a drum.”