Testimonials - Fiber Extrusion

David K. is a process engineer at a polypropylene fiber plant located in the
southeast. He describes his use of SuperNova chemical purging compound for annual maintenance:

We run 42 lines that produce 600,000 lbs per day of polypropylene fiber. The only time we shut anything off is when it breaks or when it's Christmas.

Degradation can be a problem for us. If an extruder starts putting out carbon it'll clog up our spin packs and take down the line. But these problems have been minimized since we started using SuperNova at year-end.

Every year for the holiday shutdown, we run two purges on each system. We use between 100 and 150 pounds on each machine. It cleans the extruder, the melt pump, the manifold and the lines. We pull the spin packs off and put a dummy cap in their place. The first year we purged we pulled a lot of carbon out. We also saw colors come out that we hadn't run in a really long time. When we put these systems back on line I liked the fact that the back-pressure on the startup run was much more acceptable that before the purge.

In subsequent years, we've been seeing a lot less carbon come out of the lines. I believe that these annual preventive purges are keeping us from developing more severe problems.

Some of my colleagues suggest that we stop doing this every year and wait to get the problems. I don't think that's the smart way to go. As long as I'm here we'll continue to use the SuperNova product at holidays for cleaning.