Ten years on and first Master Chemical UK installation is in peak condition
Ten years on and first Master Chemical UK installation is in peak condition
Keywords: Master Chemical Europe, Coolants
The installation of the UK's first Master Chemical Xybex System 1000 coolant recycling unit at the cable gland manufacturing operations of BICCGeneral ten years ago was of major significance to the USA based coolant specialist in that it provided the catalyst for Master Chemical to establish a full UK subsidiary(see Plate 5).
Equally significantly, after ten years of operation the recycling unit continues to produce significant savings for BICCGeneral both in terms of greatly reduced coolant replacement costs and also in terms of its impact on potential waste disposal costs.
"Our foresight by investing in the Xybex System has paid for the installation many times over", explains BICCGeneral project manager John Jones. "But the benefits of recycling as opposed to conventional coolant replenishment have been put sharply into focus by the many changes that have been made to disposal legislation in the past decade", he explains.
Plate 5"Our foresight by investing in the Master Chemical Xybex System 1000 has paid for the installation many times over", explains BICCGeneral project manager,John Jones
In 1990 BICCGeneral – in common with many manufacturing operations– were disposing of hundreds of barrels of coolant waste each month.
Even ten years ago BICCGeneral was experiencing a 40 per cent year-on-year increase in safe disposal costs – a figure that potentially could have increased many times with the introduction of the environmental protection act and greatly escalating costs for safe coolant disposal.
As Graham Venn, Director of Technical Services at Master Chemical explains,legislation costs alone substantiate the case for recycling: "A decade ago in major manufacturing operations such as at BICCGeneral, disposal costs did not warrant a mention in the budget which is certainly not the case today …Legislation has significantly impacted on waste disposal costs and companies have 'wised up' to this area of direct overhead. In addition, many manufacturing organisations have strictly enforced environmental policies and are covered by legislation in areas such as effluent disposal and safe and correct disposal of waste – all of which have an attendant cost. These costs are now significant and can appear as a major overhead on the balance sheet – hence the need to reduce them as much as possible by effective re-cycling processes".
The effective operation of the Xybex installation at BICCGeneral's plant in Prescot, Merseyside is testimony to its durable design as well as BICCGeneral's vigilance in undertaking routine maintenance.
John Jones explains that: "We don't throw any coolant away and even re-cycle the tramp oil we skim from the coolant surface … The system has been moved a few times to accommodate machine shop re-organisations and seen the installation of additional CNC machines in the past decade but ten years on we can report that it is still going strong with great reliability and continuing to produce savings.
The environment within the machine shops remains very acceptable to the personnel and in its own way, the system has impacted greatly on our operations– both environmentally and on the balance sheet".
For more information contact: Ruth Lucas, Master Chemical, UK. Tel: +44(0)1449 721985.
