R&D

Research and Development

Research and Development is critical to any company’s long-term success. In our ongoing effort to lower customers’ costs, our research focuses on enhancing numerous aspects of our customers’ businesses: improving yields while reducing make-up rates for the photovoltaic industry; maximizing oil and additive recovery rates for our flat rolled products customers; and reducing waste for all manufacturers working with industrial fluids. Our commitment to continuous process improvement has led to the development of new technologies for more effective and efficient reprocessing.

Our R&D center, located in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, also cross-functions as an off-site process improvement and development center. This facility serves as a testing site for piloting and thoroughly testing new processes and technologies before introducing them to a customer’s process. In this way, we fulfill our mission of identifying process refinements to ensure the best possible quality. Among the initiatives for our Research and Development lab:

• Increased PEG and other carrier fluid recovery rates
• Increased coolant and additive recovery rates
• Optimal extraction of contaminating mill-lubes
• Reduced residual Si and metals in kerf/fines
• Reduced volume of fines below 2 µm
• Demonstrated impact of metals and SiO2 in cutting performance
• Lower grit circularity
• Reduction in slurry and carrier water content
• Application of high shear filtration processes to reduce process energy costs
• Improvement in vapor recompression processes to reduce operating costs for dehydration and water evaporation
• Testing instrumentation and equipment improvements to ensure on-site reliability and eliminate unscheduled downtime
• Empirical comparison of retort LGS compared to FPIA particle distribution and solids weight percent
• Extraction of REO from CFL glass powder
• Ash reduction in used motor oils using TUF concepts

During the past 30 years, our commitment to innovation has significantly improved fluid reprocessing in many different industries. As new technologies emerge, our expertise and experience will forge reprocessing solutions that continue to set the standard around the world.