Industry sector: technical adhesive solutions
Company activity: manufacture of adhesive solutions for applications in the healthcare, automotive, cable, and transportation markets
Company type: major global group
Company founding period: early 20th century
Contacts: maintenance & new works manager – process engineer
Company context
The company is a global manufacturer of bonding products and adhesive components (adhesive tapes and rolls, stickers). It designs, manufactures, and sells these adhesive solutions for applications in the healthcare sector (wound care), numerous industrial fields such as electronics, as well as for consumer use. The adhesive tapes are made from rubber, paper, and plastic materials.
Filtration challenge
To manufacture these adhesive products, the company uses a mixer that blends three types of materials:
- 2 adhesive masses made from natural rubber and solvents such as toluene and hexane
- a crosslinking base (adhesive hardener) of the isocyanate type
Once blended, this mixture is poured onto the substrate to be coated through a tube approximately 30 mm in diameter. The company used to wrap the end of the tube with a monofilament mesh to retain impurities at the inlet. However, under pressure—up to 10 bar—this mesh tended to burst.
The customer therefore wanted to implement a suitable filtration solution by installing, upstream of the adhesive coating step and at the outlet of the mixer, a bag filter meeting the following technical constraints:
- flow rate: 300 kg/h
- pressure: 10 bar max
- temperature: 40 °C
- mixture viscosity: ≤ 50,000 cP
- rating: 50 µm
- seals chemically compatible with the solvents used
In addition, the customer wanted to have two filter housings, quickly interchangeable, in order to minimize production line downtime. Because the crosslinking base causes the adhesive to set rapidly, the filter media becomes clogged quickly and must be cleaned regularly.
pemflow filtration solution
We implemented a complete filtration solution. We selected a 316L stainless-steel filter housing for a size 2 bag filter / 4″1/2 ring. The filter housing has the following characteristics:
- temperature range: –10 °C to 110 °C
- maximum operating pressure: 10 bar (at the customer’s request, the bag filter was successfully tested up to 15 bar)
- closure: clamp system
- inlet/outlet: 1″ BSPM (the customer installed quick couplings to allow very rapid bag filter interchangeability)
- finish: electropolished
- gasket: Viton rubber, compatible with the solvents used
To facilitate the interchangeability of the two filter housings, the bag filter was mounted on a stand.
Expert advice
Viton-grade rubber offers excellent mechanical properties and outstanding resistance to heat and chemical agents. It performs very well against oils, fuels, lubricants, most mineral acids, as well as a wide range of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons that would dissolve other elastomers.
For the bag filter, we selected a fine felt media to take advantage of the depth-filtration effect, enabling the retention of deformable particles. The filtration rating was set at 50 or 100 µm, depending on the type of adhesive.
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