VOC Reduction

Date:

August 2019

Current Product:

Traditional solvent-based mold release applied with an automatic spray system with hand spray touch-up.

Objective:

Reduce VOC output related to mold release to avoid the installation of an RTO unit or the process for additional permitting. Reduction in fire risk and insurance costs is an ancillary benefit.

Mold cleaning needs to remain the ‘heat and wipe process’ used by this plant. No chemical cleaning and no ice blasting is possible.

Process:

Traditional flexible foam line with water heated molds running at 150 F to 165 F, Seven-minute cycle with 60 seconds from mold release application to foam injection. Fixed head spray system supplemented with hand spray gun before the spray booth.

Results:

With a co-solvent mold release containing 16% hydrocarbon solvent, we were able to convert the entire spray manifold. The hand spray gun remained on solvent-based mold release.

The solvent gun was used on tools that were not adequately covered with the automatic spray system. This step was required even with the solvent-based mold release.

Due to the slight difference in the wetting of the co-solvent release agent, the amount applied through the handgun was slightly increased, by roughly 10%.

Overall, VOC output was reduced by 85%.

We achieved our goal of avoiding the expense of an RTO unit.

The long term plan is to improve the application with the automatic spray guns to reduce the amount of solvent-based mold release applied by the handgun.

This change, combined with the improvements in the co-solvent chemistry, makes the elimination of the solvent-based mold release a reasonable objective.