Keen to improve its casting impregnation process and reduce the associated environmental impact and costs, California-based Honeywell Environmental & Combustion Controls (HECC) turned to Ultraseal International, a specialist in porosity sealing (www.ultrasealimpregnation.com), to assess its existing system and recommend improvements.

The subsequent conversion to Ultraseal recycling technology has resulted in substantial savings in sealant consumption, water usage, water treatment and effluent disposal costs — along with improved productivity.

Producing millions of combustion control valves per year, HECC carries out all machining and secondary operations in-house, and the production process starts with eight die-casting machines.

The plant’s casting impregnation process — unchanged for many years — had on-going issues with post-impregnation product quality and with the environmental costs associated with the process.

The Ultraseal team found that the impregnation system was consuming about 200 gallons of sealant per month and 1,000 gallons of water per day on the wash tank alone. There were also issues with parts becoming ‘sticky’ after impregnation.

Converting the conventional impregnation system to Ultraseal recycling technology, using its Rexeal 100 sealant, was recommended.

The Ultraseal recycling system is a fully closed loop on the cold-wash operation and requires no changes in the application of the impregnation process.

The Sealant Recovery System (SRS) provides cost-effective processing, while avoiding the challenge of process chemical effluent treatment, eliminating solids disposal and greatly reducing the associated evaporation costs.

The conversion was achieved by adding the SRS module and modifying two of the wash-and-cure tanks to improve component washing, thereby eliminating the problem of ‘sticky’ components.

This meant that Honeywell (www.honeywellprocess.com) could also eliminate one of its three tanks, which reduced the time required for processing.