Contamination is often inevitable in your operations, but it can significantly reduce the lifespan of your components. Sometimes there’s not much you can do about it but accept that you’ll be reordering certain parts with reasonable frequency. Other times, alternatives or modifications can increase lifespan. This will save you money on fewer parts, of course, but it will also mean significantly reduced downtime. And time is money! Consider this example of contamination in knife gate valves in which a “small” investment led to large savings.
Success Story
Problem
A customer in the chemical processing industry was having knife gate valves failing prematurely due to calcined alumina contamination.
Solution
ErieTec suggested a new packing material impregnated with TFE.
The TFE served to fill voids int he backing and would then limit the contamination and lengthen the lifespan of the knife gate valves.
Savings Calculation
Each time the valve failed, it cost the customer $5,000 in parts and labor. It had been failing an average of 4 times per year. Utilizing this new packing material reduced failures to zero for the following year, savings the customer a total of $20,000 for the year. Because this is a fairly new solution, we don’t know how long they will go without a failure, so the total amount saved could be much more.
At ErieTec, we’re not content to just sit here and take your orders. We want to actively identify problem areas and see how we can help you to become more efficient, more productive, and spend less money. Call us!