Envirofluid is helping an airline maintenance company to not only achieve optimal cleaning results, but also reduce waste disposal costs.
An airline maintenance company has been using other Envirofluid products for a number of years in their cleaning processes and happily agreed to trial Triple7 Aircraft & Metal, a powerful bio-based and readily biodegradable cleaner and degreaser that is used for cleaning aircraft exteriors, components and soft metals. After seeing the impressive results of the trial, the company decided to commit to a full use of Triple7 Aircraft & Metal in their workshop.
Improving Lives
Substituting traditional cleaners with Triple7 Aircraft & Metal effectively reduces toxins and allergens in their company’s workplace and lowers the risk of chemical sensitivities from cleaning agents. Triple7 Aircraft & Metal is free of hazardous air pollutants, VOCs and toxic chemicals, making it safe to use in confined areas.
Improving Business
Choosing Worksafe and environmentally-sustainable cleaning products such as Triple7 Aircraft & Metal lowers environmental compliance costs and decreases potential for future liability concerns. The product is highly-concentrated and can be filtered and re-used, making it last longer. It is
readily biodegradable and suitable for wastewater drainage and landfill, reducing waste disposal costs.
Improving Innovation
Because Triple7 Aircraft & Metal is non-corrosive, it is safe for a wide variety of materials including metals, acrylics, rubbers, seals, vinyl, glass, fabrics, paint or other finishes and surfaces that are compatible with water. It can be used in soak tanks, pressure washers, and all types of machine applications.
The Situation
The airline maintenance company washes and cleans thousands of wheels and brakes over the course of a year. Looking for sustainable, earth-friendly ways to carry out their operations is one of the company’s core responsibilities.
The Challenge
The challenge lay in sourcing a cleaning product for wheels and brakes that fulfills its role to the required standard and ensuring that the pros outweigh the cons. The product must not only be environmentally-friendly and safe for workers, but it must also be safe for use on equipment and aircraft parts so as not to compromise their integrity.
The Hazards
Traditional cleaners contain chemicals that are corrosive to equipment and harmful for people and the environment. In particular, commonly used solvents for brake cleaning contain ingredients that pose serious health and safety risks to the workers using them.
Whilst most pollutants are removed from the water by waste treatment facilities before they are released into waterways, there are some types of chemicals that cannot be removed through these processes, such as ammonia (used for general sanitising and degreasing), and nitrogen (usually found in glass and surface cleaners), among others.
The Solution
Envirofluid supplied the airline maintenance company with Triple7 Aircraft & Metal for use in their workshop to clean wheels and brakes. It is a non-toxic, non-hazardous, non-flammable and readily-biodegradable product. It does not react with cleaning surfaces; instead, it works by causing long chain hydrocarbon soils such as JA or JP fuels, cutting or other lubricants, and other airborne soils to repel from the surface and release into a water rinse stream.
Triple7 Aircraft & Metal worked as efficiently as the previous product used by the company and it didn’t take longer to complete the process compared to what they were used to. The company realised a longevity of the fluid in the bath, which in turn reduced their waste disposal costs and downtime caused by more frequent bath servicing.
With the wheel and brake cleaning solution previously used, the wash bath needed to be changed out roughly once per quarter. In contrast, the bath change extended to almost once in an entire year when using Triple7 Aircraft & Metal. Moreover, this was achieved without decreasing the cleaning efficiency of the bath.
The airline maintenance company has proven with their wash unit that you can get significant volume of throughput – over 2200 wheels and brakes – from a single batch of Triple7 Aircraft & Metal.
Great article!