Water Saving Tech for Rubber Industry

New line of “instant” slab dips to innovate and save water for companies mixing rubber

Maine—Water is one of the world's most valuable natural resources, and one Maine-based company believes it has found a solution to the unnecessary use of water in the rubber industry.

The firm believes it can save companies in the rubber industry thousands of dollars per year.

Superior Formulations L.L.C. recently unveiled a new line of “instant” slab dips that its founders figure will cause a positive paradigm change for any company that mixes rubber. These slab dips will help manufacturers of compounds, belts, hoses, tires and other rubber goods save money in a variety of ways, according to Superior Formulations.

Branded under the name OverCoat, the slab dips provide significant freight savings, savings in floor space, better convenience and the complete elimination of product spoilage, said Nicholas Hill, who runs Superior Formulations with his son, Kristopher. The firm said OverCoat can help protect products from freezing and having to recycle drums and totes.

“People in our industry pay a lot of money to ship water when you consider that 50 to 86 percent of a shipped product is water,” said Nicholas Hill, a formulating chemist with more than 30 years in the industry. “But we wanted to create a properly formulated and mixed solution ... one we could do onsite and on demand.”

The process allows customers to hydrate stearates on demand so it won't thicken, Hill said.

Kristopher and his father began working on a solution four years ago, and they have encountered many twists and turns along the way.

“Our challenge was figuring it out without spending a king's ransom,” said Kristopher, a computer hardware and software professional. A major part of the solution was his creation of the Constituter, which meters the water, heats it to the proper temperature, adds an appropriate amount of OverCoat power and produces slab dip slurry on the plant floor.

The Constituter helps to “protect” the intellectual property aspects of the solutions, Kristopher said. It is housed with four computers, and Nicholas calls it a “straightforward but complex” instrument.

“If someone could figure out how to replicate what they have, they wouldn't be able to (duplicate) the Constituter,” Nicholas said. “One unique feature is that the technology for managing the dip tank is outside of the device itself.”

Shrinking a conventional slurry plant to the size of a drum is one of the other benefits, Kristopher said. They accomplished this by automating the dip tank. A component was designed to monitor the solids level in the dip tank in real time. The Constituter then adds water or OverCoat slurry to the dip tank to maintain a stable solids level.

Source: Rubber and Plastic News

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• Water Treatment Solutions
• Industrial Water Reuse
• Industrial Water Managment