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User Success Story: Transferring a High Viscosity, Delicate Liquid without Changing the Liquid's Characteristics

The pump that resolved the lack of flow rate issues for a hard to transfer, high viscosity adhesive application without changing the liquid’s characteristics.

Chemical Manufacturer L

Development Department

Company L is a chemical manufacturer that manufactures a wide variety of pressure sensitive adhesives. Although they have already begun to develop new adhesives, they were struggling with a lack of discharge volume at the time of the raw materials transfer.

Problem

Mr. A, the person responsible for the development department, was struggling with a raw material transfer as it was not going as planned.

“Since the viscosity of the raw materials is about 40,000 mPa・s, it is difficult to transfer, so the liquid was transferred with the inside of the tank pressurized, but only about one-tenth of the desired flow rate (1 mL/min) could be transferred and a situation of insufficient flow was continuing.” As a result of a thorough investigation to determine what the cause of the problem was, it was understood that the problem was not only with the viscosity of the raw material.

“We were performing filtration to remove unwanted coagulates, but since the holes in the filter are a very small 3μm, there was considerable resistance for the raw material to just pass through the mesh of the filter. I had no choice but to judge that it would be very difficult to continue to pressurize the tank and transfer the liquid any more than we were up until now, so I decided to consider installing a new pump. In order to select a suitable pump, we calculated the discharge pressure and determined that the pump would need to be able handle up to about 10 MPa of discharge pressure.”

This was not the only factor that was causing concerns. “The raw material contains UV curable resin that becomes a gel when shear (shear force) is caused during transfer. Therefore, determining how to transfer the liquid without changing its characteristics was also a key point in choosing our new pump.”

Mr. A made every effort to find an ideal pump that could transfer a high-viscosity 40,000 mPa・s liquid at a discharge pressure of 10 MPa without losing to the resistance pressure of the filter or changing the liquid’s characteristics.

Problem Points

・The actual flow rate is only 1/10th of the target flow rate.

・The holes in the mesh of the filter are very small and they cause resistance to the liquid being transferred.

・The raw material contains UV curable resin that gels up when shear is applied to it.

Solution

The customer was able to clear their desired flow rate with a Smoothflow pump capable of high viscosity and high pressure specifications and with a structure that does not cause the liquid to shear or change the liquid’s characteristics!

Mr. A recalled that his company was using Tacmina pumps in another division. “I hear that even though it is a diaphragm pump, there is no pulsation and it is able to handle high viscosity liquids. When I contacted the salesperson in charge of the other division, I also learned that these Smoothflow Pumps have a structure that does not apply shear to the transfer liquid.”

Mr. A was quickly introduced to a Tacmina salesperson and performed an actual liquid test using a Smoothflow pump at Tacmina’s Liquid Solution Center’s experiment space. As a result, he had excellent success transferring his high viscosity liquid at his desired flowrate of 1mL/min. Also, he was able to confirm that the liquid’s characteristics were not changed after the filtration process was complete.

“The Smoothflow pump does not have any rotating or sliding parts in the wetted parts section, so it has a structure that can gently transfer the liquid without scraping or shearing it. In additional, I was able to see for myself that even delicate transfer liquids could be transferred without shear changing the liquid’s characteristics. Thanks to this pump, we were able to achieve our goal of mass producing these new adhesives.”

Mr. A seems to be extremely satisfied with the performance of our Smoothflow pumps.

Resolved Points

・Able to transfer these liquids with a high viscosity of about 40,000 mPa・s at a pressure of 10 MPa.

High Viscosity VPL Smoothflow Pump

Details

  • Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
  • TACMINA CORPORATION

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