Surface World February 2019 SW_Feb_2019_LR | Page 6

INDUSTRY NEWS
The importance of
chemical compatibility
Automated Water & Effluent
Ltd develops tool to assist
with specifying chemically
compatible equipment.
In all aspects of the surface finishing sector
chemical reagents are used from process
control in pre-treatment right through to post
treatment environments including pH control
for effluent treatment.
As a mature engineering base the UK and
Europe have stringent controls in place for
chemical handling, which considering the
impact that some commonly used chemical
reagents can have has helped to ensure
operator and environmental safety.
Manual handling has reduced as a direct
result of the need for safer chemical handling
as well as the search for precision control of
chemical reagents in many processes.
To ensure that control equipment can safely
work with a chemical reagent, it’s important to
ensure that any equipment in contact with the
chemical reagent is chemically compatible.
As suppliers of sensors, instrumentation and
control systems designed to measure or
control chemical processes – the engineers at
Automated Water & Effluent Ltd are all too
familiar with the importance of ensuring that
all the parts of equipment is chemically
compatible with the reagent that’s being used.
Where a dosing pump might be manufactured
with the head material in chemically resistant
thermoplastic, it’s also important to ensure
that the valve material, diaphragm, non-return
valves and all the other ancillary parts are also
chemically resistant.
With this in mind the engineers at Automated
Water & Effluent Ltd have developed two
tools to ensure that new devices such as
chemical dosing pumps, sensors and valves
are chemically compatible.
For new devices we’ve listed a chemical and
material compatibility database on our
website available at www.awe-ltd.co.uk or
directly by going to https://www.awe-ltd.
co.uk/chemical-compatibility-and-material-
compatibility-database.html
The chemical and material compatibility
database can be interrogated either
from a chemical or material perspective.
By selecting the chemical resistance tab from
the chemical compatibility database, the user
can simply search for the chemical reagent
and the database will show the chemical
resistance of commonly used materials in
process control equipment.
Alternatively – by selecting the materials
tab, you can enter the material that you
are planning on using, which includes
thermoplastics such as PVC & PVDF, spring
materials such as Stainless Steel or Hastelloy
C, as well as Valve and Seal materials like
Ceramic, PTFE or Viton to find the chemical
compatibility of that material against
commonly used chemical reagents.
FEBRUARY 2019
This has been designed to ensure that any
additional equipment matches the wetted parts
of the existing equipment to ensure compatibility.
While scanning a QR code brings
convenience and simplifies sourcing spares
and accessories we understand that in
engineering environments it’s not always
practical to scan a QR code. So we still
ensure that we can track every pump that we
supply with a simple phone call to our offices.
As a major supplier of chemical dosing pumps
we now issue our pumps complete wth a
4
chemically resistant label printed with a
unique QR which relates to the dosing pumps
construction. An operator can simply scan the
QR with a cell phone or other compatible
device and the reveal the full bill of materials,
flow rates and power requirements for any
dosing pump that we’ve supplied.
Telephone: [phone]
Visit: www.awe-ltd.co.uk
read online: www.surfaceworld.com