AOC delivers great service providing chemical resistance advice

Composite components are being used for their excellent durability and resistance to a wide variety of chemicals. Manufacturers of industrial equipment use these components as they are vital for ensuring continued process operation. Ronald Uitterdijk explains how AOC helps its customers to select the right product solution for obtaining both great chemical resistance and optimized system cost.

Designed for Durability

Industrial process equipment is designed for a long and reliable operating life. While it may be for storing chemicals or water, for cold and warm conditions, for pipes or vessels, the equipment has to withstand tough environments. Engineers must be sure that the components do not crack or fail, so that a continuous process operation can be guaranteed.

“Our customers typically know very well how to design the structural components of their equipment”, explains Ronald Uitterdijk, Associate Scientist at AOC. “But when it comes to selecting the right formulations, laminate build-up, thickness of the corrosion layer, and types of glass and surfacing veils, they often come to us for advice or for a second opinion.”

Great Chemical Resistance

The combination of using aggressive chemicals at elevated temperatures clearly poses some interesting questions on the choice of composite materials. How is material strength evolving over time? How to deal with mixtures of chemicals, different media going through the same pipe, or temperature fluctuations? How do additives for improving electrical conductivity or for improving abrasion resistance affect chemical resistance? These questions clearly require a serious investigation of material and design alternatives.

“Our customers can already find many details on the chemical resistance of our formulations in the AOC Chemical Resistance Guide”, adds Ronald Uitterdijk. “Particularly, as in the latest edition also Styrene-free and Food Contact formulations are included. For more challenging components and chemical environments customers often ask us for support. We do a detailed investigation of part design and the specific exposure the part will see over time. Making full use of our expertise, we then issue a written formulation advice that our customers use to sell their products to end-users, engineering companies and equipment operators.”

In order for AOC to make accurate recommendations on chemical resistance, typically customers are asked to specify the environment (composition of chemicals, concentrations, pH values, storage conditions), service temperatures, mechanical exposure, and composite laminate build-up.

Building on Expertise

AOC has an excellent track record in giving advices about Chemical Resistance, and has proven over the years it can support its customers with adequate and reliable support. With the Atlac® formulations AOC has a history that goes back more than forty years, where components have been in continuous service and exposed to different chemical substances and aggressive environments.

By logging all these experiences, combined with our ongoing development and testing program, we have been able to build up an extensive knowledge base of how our formulations perform in contact with a vast range of corrosive media in different concentrations and at different temperatures. So far more than 12,500 entries are in our Chemical Resistance database.

“We have often helped to increase both performance and cost of the customers’ equipment, by selecting the right formulation and laminate build-up,” concludes Ronald Uitterdijk. “Sometimes using more expensive formulations helps to reduce overall system cost because of manufacturing process simplification. In other applications we work with the customer to optimize the construction so that cheaper formulations can be used. In all cases our customers know they can rely on us and do have a fast access to qualified experts.”

For questions on the chemical resistance of AOC formulations or for receiving further advice, please contact us.

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