News & Tech Tips

Prevent Safety Hazards and Protect Your Plant With Expert Gasket & Seal

Greencrest Digital on October 30, 2024

When leaks occur in a chemical plant, it presents a very serious safety hazard for plant personnel, and also nearby residents if not taken care of thoroughly. If the hazardous substance drains or gets into the plant waste collection, it must be collected and treated, as no manufacturer wants to release any of the toxic chemicals into nearby streams or rivers. When a chemical manufacturer was having trouble with a leaking man-way gasket, they knew they needed to find a solution fast, so they reached out to the team at Expert Gasket & Seal.

After some initial research on the materials used for the man-way gasket, it was determined to be a bolting issue and not a material compatibility issue. The customer was using a grade 5 bolt on a flange where more bolt torque was needed, as well as a higher-grade bolt material.

Durlon gaskets

Solution

Expert Gasket & Seal switched to a grade 8 bolt, which combined with washers and a thread lubricant, were successfully able to get the proper bolt yield needed to achieve a strong seal. Expert Gasket & Seal leveraged its long relationship with Durlon, its gasket sheet material supplier which has a special bolting program to get the needed bolt torque. From there, the leaking issue was resolved very quickly.

Results

The upgraded bolt and increased bolt torque have prevented further leaks from the man-way gasket. The customer feels peace of mind knowing they found a solution that protects their employees, residents of the city and the environment.

Don’t let hazardous chemical leaks threaten safety at your facility — contact Expert Gasket & Seal and start protecting your plant today!

Production Delays Are a Thing of the Past with Expert Gasket & Seal Solution

Greencrest Digital on May 6, 2024

Downtime and production delays are not only stressful, but can cost manufacturing facilities thousands of dollars if not handled properly. When a chemical additives producer was experiencing constant production delays due to pump and seal failure, they reached out to Expert Gasket & Seal for solutions.

Upon investigating the issue, it became clear that many of the issues the customer was facing at their facility were compounded by the fact that they had multiple pumps and mixers hooked up to a single recirculating gear pump for their barrier fluid protection. One specific pump was a constant source of failure. Additionally, the “press” pump was seeing higher pressure than the balance of the group, due to back pressure buildup from a filter press getting clogged and overcoming the seal/stuffing box pressure.

recirculating gear pump

Solution

After Expert Gasket & Seal consulted with an engineering partner, it was determined that the facility needed a double seal with its own ASME stamped seal pot/barrier tank. The pressure on this seal pot would need to be set higher for this single barrier system than what the filter press would create with its back pressure. The tank pressure was set at roughly 65 PSI, which the 595 double pumper cartridge seal can handle easily. The 595 double pumper cartridge seal with the barrier tank is independent of the pump and the pressure associated with the process.

Results

Isolating the 595 double pumper cartridge seal from the others on a “community loop” setup will greatly extend the life of this pump and seal process. By setting this one pump and seal up to its own pressured barrier tank, it can run longer and for extended periods without downtime. This solution should double or even triple the life of the seal and eliminate downtime on a very valuable piece of production equipment for this facility.

Struggling with production delays and downtime at your facility, but can’t seem to get to the root of the problem? Then contact Expert Gasket & Seal for solutions that save time, money and reduce stress!

Expert Gasket & Seal Customizes Solution to Combat Powdery Raw Material Spills

Greencrest Digital on December 14, 2022

Handling raw materials is an integral part of the manufacturing industry, and poor handling can lead to safety and productivity concerns. So, when a welding rod manufacturer was experiencing toxic raw material spills throughout its warehouse, they turned to Expert Gasket & Seal.

While transporting totes of the material by forklift to vessels for production, powder-based raw material was leaking out. Due to its fine particle form, dusty, gritty, pumice-like material was being carried by foot and by equipment contaminating other parts of the building including offices and areas of the plant where “cleaner” manufacturing practices are required. This led to safety and housecleaning issues, as well as the loss of valuable product.

Solution

Working with the manufacturer’s maintenance and engineering teams, Expert Gasket & Seal designed a cone-shaped rubber boot out of 30 Durometer Silicone rubber to form a seal between the top of each metal tote and the production equipment, creating a positive seal and eliminating spillage.

Results

The silicone seal not only eliminated spills on the floor that migrated to other parts of the facility, but it also limited the amount of the toxic material in the atmosphere. Because the cone-shaped seals are durable and can be reused many times over, the savings in loss of material and cleaning costs alone easily offset the cost of the seals.

If transporting raw materials is leading to costly spills in your manufacturing process, call Expert Gasket & Seal today for a customized solution to your sealing needs.

Expert Gasket & Seal Fixes Leaky Filling Equipment, Saving Hundreds of Hours for Solvent Manufacturer

Greencrest Digital on September 22, 2022

A solvent leak can become very costly, very quickly — not to mention dangerous, as it involves hazardous waste. Any leak not only presents risks to production and equipment, but it also puts the health and safety of employees at risk. So, when a solvent manufacturer was experiencing leakage during their filling process, they turned to Expert Gasket & Seal for a solution.

The solvent manufacturer was filling small quart cans with its product using precision filling equipment that filled by weight and volume. During production, the seals which regulated the flow of the solvent experienced a major leak resulting in underfilled cans, the loss of finished products and hazardous material exposure to the workplace.

Expert Gasket & Seal assessed the situation and recommended replacing the dynamic O-ring with an energized PTFE seal. The new seal was energized by a Perfluorelastomer O-ring for its chemical resistance, and the machined PTFE seal jacket provided a friction-free seal with wiping action and with little to no seal wear or leakage.

With the PTFE design, the seal was not wearing out like the plain dynamic O-ring and there was no longer a need to continually stop production to replace faulty O-rings. And this was all done with existing hardware without the need to retrofit the machined components of the equipment.

The filling equipment consisted of 24 filler heads. Expert Gasket & Seal’s expert sealing solution increased the life of each filler by hundreds of hours, allowing the manufacturer to extend the production schedule and cut downtime by at least four times over.

Don’t let a leak put your company at risk. Protect your assets and your people with a custom solution from Expert Gasket & Seal.
Call our experts today at 800.956.8766

Expert Gasket & Seal Replaces Faulty O-Ring With Custom Gasket to Protect Valuable Equipment

Greencrest Digital on June 20, 2022

An O-ring can fail for different reasons. Maybe it’s made from the wrong material for the application, or it is not compatible with the O-ring groove design. When an international healthcare products company came to Expert Gasket & Seal with an O-ring that repeatedly fell out, we got to work to provide a customized solution.

o-rings
The company was using an O-ring in a groove to seal a two-piece cast aluminum electrical enclosure that protected a delicate circuit board from environmental elements — rain, snow and other potential contaminants. The irregular O-ring groove on the casting used a very small cross section O-ring that was difficult to install and often fell out after installation. After the enclosure was assembled it was impossible to see if the O-ring had become dislodged. Without the proper seal, the circuit board was no longer protected and was subject to premature failure.

Expert Gasket & Seal fabricated a new gasket from a closed cell Neoprene sponge (CCNS) with a peel and stick, pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) backing to bond the elements without the use of the groove. The PSA backing kept the gasket in place during assembly significantly decreasing installation time.

Our recommendation and the prototype gasket which was fabricated in-house were supplied in only a few days using our rapid Flashcut system.

With the new custom gasket, labor and installation time was decreased, and the risk of assembly failure was eliminated, providing a substantial cost savings to the healthcare products company.

If you need a custom solution to a sealing problem, and you need it fast, contact the experts at Expert Gasket & Seal today!

Expert Gasket & Seal Helps Client Combat Equipment Failure While Maintaining FDA Compliance

Greencrest Digital on April 6, 2022

At Expert Gasket & Seal, we don’t just provide sealing products, we provide sealing solutions. Our customer’s success is our priority. So, when an international food manufacturer came to us with major equipment failure of one of their cooking vessels, we tackled the challenge with open minds and ready hands.

The large steam cooking vessel was designed to go from the ambient plant temperature to 250 degrees Fahrenheit steam. The steam was injected through a tube that also served as the shaft to which the seal was attached. Because the shaft we were sealing was also the heating element, the axial shaft would grow .250“-.375“. This expansion was causing almost instant failure of the mechanical seal from stretching, rolling O-rings and shattering hard seal faces.

Working with Advanced Sealing International (ASI), our experts designed a custom double mechanical seal, based on ASI’s Model 600, which allowed for the necessary shaft growth without destroying seal faces or damaging plant equipment. Designing the custom mechanical seal required focus on several factors other than the equipment failure. We needed to design a seal that would address factors like minimizing the use of water being wasted as the barrier fluid, frictional heat, the set up and crystallization of the sugars in the product on seal faces during downtime, product loss and waste, product contamination and of course the safety of plant personnel — all while maintaining FDA compliance.

This new custom mechanical seal increased the life of the equipment’s seal from around 2-6 weeks to 1-4 years — that’s an average increase of nearly 3,000 percent. Considering that it takes around eight hours to replace the drive end and thrust end of the vessel seals, increasing the seal life has resulted in a reduction in downtime, increased production, increased safety and decreased collateral equipment damage.

Expert Gasket & Seal can solve your gasket and seal problems too.
Just call and expert today at 800.956.8766