One of the world’s largest ceiling tile manufacturers can’t afford to shut down its plant due to equipment and computer failure. To manufacture its ceiling tiles, the manufacturer uses quite a bit of water, dispensing between 1.5 and 2 million gallons a day. The wastewater treatment portion of its manufacturing plant is used to clean this water, which allows the manufacturer to stay environmentally compliant. If the wastewater treatment area shuts down, the entire plant shuts down, which means costly downtime.

After repeated computer and equipment failures for nearly 45 years, the manufacturer took the advice of a nearby paper mill and worked with Purafil to address the failures in its mission critical motor control room.

There are 40 motors in the wastewater cleaning section of the plant, all of which are critical to the success of the entire plant. If these motors are down, the plant can’t properly treat the water, which means production must stop. To address this issue, Purafil installed Corrosion Classification Coupons (CCCs) in the motor control room to monitor corrosion levels and identify what was causing the failures. The CCCs confirmed a highly corrosive environment (GX) even though the rest of the plant wasn’t facing corrosion problems. The culprit? H₂S, a chemical released in the wastewater treatment process.

Despite efforts to maintain a clean motor control room (plugging holes, tightening the door seals), the H₂S was quickly corroding the equipment, computers, and the gas and electric heaters. Purafil installed a tub scrubber to remove the H₂S and improve the overall environment. As a result, equipment reliability is significantly higher, with no failures since the tub scrubber installation. A process control tech describes the scrubber as one of their better investments, explaining that Purafil has made electrical corrosion issues a thing of the past.

To ensure that the motor control room remains a G1 level environment, the manufacturer uses CCCs for monitoring. We’ve worked with them since 2014 to maintain a non-corrosive environment and keep production up by eliminating equipment failures with our low-maintenance tub scrubber. Our representatives’ level of service and expertise allows us to provide the best solutions for our customers.