The Company
The Company is a worldwide leader in the manufacturing and distribution of pressure sensitive adhesive materials, office products and various other paper products.
The Process
A solvent based coating is applied to a substrate in a multi-zone oven. The solvent is vaporized off, leaving behind the finished product. Flame Ionization Detectors are used to monitor the zones in a sequential timing mode for the presence of dangerous concentrations of solvents.
The Problem
The Company consolidated its coating lines into one facility. This meant that they went from a single-solvent only process to multiple solvents and therefore they needed to ensure added safety. The FID sequential sampling system could not handle monitoring the mixtures of solvents. In addition, the sample lines were long and unheated creating slow response time and sample dropout, leading to unsafe conditions. They needed a monitoring system that would bring them up to date with the current safety directives.
The Solution
The Company chose to purchase PrevEx Flammability Analyzers for each individual oven zone for a number of reasons. First because they have multiple solvents they didn’t want to have to recalibrate when the solvents change. The PrevEx gives consistent and reliable readings when faced with multiple or changing solvent concentrations. Its “Universal Calibration” feature allows solvent changes without recalibration, avoiding unnecessary downtime and production delay. In addition, the analyzer is heated and mounts directly on the process reducing sample delivery time, while accelerating response time.
The cost of adding additional analyzers was minimal with respect to the flexibility that this addition allowed them to achieve in their production.