A solvent leak can become very costly, very quickly — not to mention dangerous, as it involves hazardous waste. Any leak not only presents risks to production and equipment, but it also puts the health and safety of employees at risk. So, when a solvent manufacturer was experiencing leakage during their filling process, they turned to Expert Gasket & Seal for a solution.

The solvent manufacturer was filling small quart cans with its product using precision filling equipment that filled by weight and volume. During production, the seals which regulated the flow of the solvent experienced a major leak resulting in underfilled cans, the loss of finished products and hazardous material exposure to the workplace.

Expert Gasket & Seal assessed the situation and recommended replacing the dynamic O-ring with an energized PTFE seal. The new seal was energized by a Perfluorelastomer O-ring for its chemical resistance, and the machined PTFE seal jacket provided a friction-free seal with wiping action and with little to no seal wear or leakage.

With the PTFE design, the seal was not wearing out like the plain dynamic O-ring and there was no longer a need to continually stop production to replace faulty O-rings. And this was all done with existing hardware without the need to retrofit the machined components of the equipment.

The filling equipment consisted of 24 filler heads. Expert Gasket & Seal’s expert sealing solution increased the life of each filler by hundreds of hours, allowing the manufacturer to extend the production schedule and cut downtime by at least four times over.

Don’t let a leak put your company at risk. Protect your assets and your people with a custom solution from Expert Gasket & Seal.
Call our experts today at 800.956.8766

At Expert Gasket & Seal, we don’t just provide sealing products, we provide sealing solutions. Our customer’s success is our priority. So, when an international food manufacturer came to us with major equipment failure of one of their cooking vessels, we tackled the challenge with open minds and ready hands.

The large steam cooking vessel was designed to go from the ambient plant temperature to 250 degrees Fahrenheit steam. The steam was injected through a tube that also served as the shaft to which the seal was attached. Because the shaft we were sealing was also the heating element, the axial shaft would grow .250“-.375“. This expansion was causing almost instant failure of the mechanical seal from stretching, rolling O-rings and shattering hard seal faces.

Working with Advanced Sealing International (ASI), our experts designed a custom double mechanical seal, based on ASI’s Model 600, which allowed for the necessary shaft growth without destroying seal faces or damaging plant equipment. Designing the custom mechanical seal required focus on several factors other than the equipment failure. We needed to design a seal that would address factors like minimizing the use of water being wasted as the barrier fluid, frictional heat, the set up and crystallization of the sugars in the product on seal faces during downtime, product loss and waste, product contamination and of course the safety of plant personnel — all while maintaining FDA compliance.

This new custom mechanical seal increased the life of the equipment’s seal from around 2-6 weeks to 1-4 years — that’s an average increase of nearly 3,000 percent. Considering that it takes around eight hours to replace the drive end and thrust end of the vessel seals, increasing the seal life has resulted in a reduction in downtime, increased production, increased safety and decreased collateral equipment damage.

Expert Gasket & Seal can solve your gasket and seal problems too.
Just call and expert today at 800.956.8766