Our solvent recovery equipment has successfully helped a number of paint and coating operations to:

• Cut virgin solvent purchase and storage costs
• Reduce the volume of hazardous waste that was generated
• Lower associated hazardous waste disposal costs
• Improve status as a hazardous waste generator

The experiences of two customers clearly illustrate how well solvent recovery equipment can achieve these goals:

Florida Production Engineering (FPE) is a manufacturer of plastic injection molding for the automotive industry.  Hoping to cut its solvent-related costs, FPE wanted to reduce both its need to purchase virgin solvents and the volume of hazardous waste they had to dispose of.

The Florida-based company, which uses a variety of solvents to flush paint lines, at first tried to change its solvent usage tactics to increase usage efficiency and then contracted with a new disposal service to decrease disposal rates. Neither strategy realized the savings that FPE hoped for.

Eventually, FPE did realize those savings – and more, once it purchased a TechnoClean S-3000 Solvent Recovery unit.

Unexpected benefits of FPE’s purchase of a solvent recovery unit included:

• A happy ISO auditor, pleased with including such a forward-thinking project in his report
• Increased credibility on Jones’ part to identify and implement other cost savings / environmental improvement projects

Indianapolis-based Commercial Finishers, Inc., which provides a range of sophisticated coating services, also sought to seriously trim its $64,000+ in annual solvent-related costs and to reduce its environmental footprint.

But its efforts were complicated by the use of three different solvents (MEK, xylene and lacquer thinner) used on three different production areas across an operation that incorporated six total production coating lines. The company had hoped to recover over 80% of its paint line solvents while meeting the production needs of all three production areas.