Mike Thomason is president of Ti Technologies Inc., Detroit, MI. He can be reached at 313.841.1060 or mthomason@titechllc.com. The company's website is www.titechllc.com.
Dispersion chemistry for scrubbing paint particulate emissions was originally developed by Nalco in the late 1980s and gained increased exposure when it was marketed by Phillips Service Corp. (PSC) in the mid 1990s. The chemistry provided outstanding performance compared to conventional "de-tack" programs in maintaining system cleanliness, increasing production uptime and substantially reducing system cleaning costs, and it appeared to be ideally suited for use in high production automotive assembly plants. Unfortunately, when the chemistry was used with conventional venturi scrubbers, portions of the oily dispersion/paint mixture were discharged from the exhaust stacks, requiring the use of additional (and often expensive) filtration equipment.