MPW Comes to a Material Science Company’s Rescue
MPW’s teamwork, innovation, automation and pure persistence helped an eastern material science company out of a very difficult position. In mid-July, a material science company was creating a paint resin in a three-story tall mixing tank in the middle of a material science plant when problems began. The resin would not stop solidifying and eventually turned into something similar to gelatinous concrete inside the tank, clogging all its valves and freezing production.
Considering the size and location of the tank, replacing it was not an option and cleaning the tank seemed problematic at best. But Northeast District Regional Manager Richard May said the material science company was literally losing $20,000 for every hour the tank was not operating. This added up to roughly $400,000 per day and the potential to lose millions of dollars the longer the tank sat.
“Our job was to come up with solutions to overcome the company’s challenging problem,” said Branch Manager Brandon McCloud. He said the material science company was in a very tough position because the company needed to make sure that attempts to resolve the problem didn’t cause any new problems and, especially in this case, removing the stubborn resin posed many dangers to the MPW technicians as the material science company considers high-pressure water cleaning to be a life-critical activity.
McCloud said there were steps to clean the tank that the material science company was willing to take, but the company’s technicians would always point out the worst-case scenario in case something went wrong. “They said, if you want to do this, we have to avoid that,” McCloud said. “That’s where the automation came in.”
The MPW team called on Engineering Manager Robb Spangler and the MPW Engineering Department for help. “The engineering team did a great job,” McCloud said. “Robb did a lot of footwork in Hebron trying to get things together for us, being seven hours away. I can’t just run around Hebron looking for parts like he can.”
McCloud said the MPW team used a combination of 10,000 and 20,000 psi waterjets as well as 2D and 3D automated units. The 2D units cut with a back-and-forth motion directly ahead of the unit while the 3D waterjetters can cut all around themselves. The automatic units could be lowered into the gigantic tank, allowing human technicians to stay out of harm’s way.
It took a total of 11 days to slice through the resin and clean out the material science company’s tank, which was perfectly clean and 100% operational when the MPW team was finished. “That’s what’s addicting to industrial cleaners,” McCloud said. “It’s that end result; to look down and see the tank or unit completely clean when it was a disaster before.”