Telephone: +44 1915 166881email: m.rams@proaqua-uk.com

Company News

22
Dec

proaqua UK brings process improvements to Bourbon Automotive

After suffering significant issues with their supplier of coagulation chemistry, Bourbon Automotive Plastics in Northampton turned to proaqua UK to improve their paint sludge recovery process.

Bourbon produces painted interior plastic parts in their facility for Automotive OEM customers, including Toyota UK. Their automated robotic painting process sprays both waterborne and solventborne paint technologies, which can give a challenge for selection of the correct chemical programme.

With their previous supplier of coagulation products, Bourbon encountered significant issues with recovery of paint solids from their system.

A significant quantity of water had to be removed from the system every 2-3 weeks in order to maintain control of both solids deposition and water conductivity. Volumes of settled solids of up to 250kg were removed every time water was removed from the system. Poor solids recovery also caused pump blockages and process downtime for cleaning.

proaqua introduced our chemical technology, along with technical improvements to assist solids recovery in August 2015.

Since then, Bourbon have reported much improved performance over their previous supplier, with no need to regularly remove water from the system.

In fact, when water was removed to check solids deposition, only 30kg of sludge was recovered after 4 months of operation. System water conductivity is now also much lower and stable, thus reducing any corrosion potential in the system.

proaqua have now agreed a long term supply contract with Bourbon to supply products to their paint system.