Surface treatment and adhesion 2

Within this subject area, in 2020 DMN worked with the project:

“Characterization of new and used plastic surfaces from production equipment”

The project was carried out in collaboration with FORCE Technology, Marel A/S, Lely Nordic and National Oilwell Vargo I/S.

The purpose of the collaborative project is to make it possible to carry out a valid characterization of new plastic blanks and plastic blanks from equipment in operation. This increases the basis for equipment manufacturers and food companies to carry out a lifetime and risk assessment of equipment and product respectively. The characterization is based on surface openness (topography), quality of joints (welds), cleanability and on the hygienic design (in relation to function) of the equipment. When the surface of equipment is damaged, it is often linked to failures in the hygienic design or that the quality of the material used does not match the production and cleaning process.

The hygiene factor is calculated on the basis of roughness measurements carried out on new items and on items that have been in use in the meat processing industry and in milking robots at various farmers.

In order to validate the results obtained and to be able to indicate what level of hygiene factor makes the item acceptable or unsuitable for continued use, it requires further experiments with deliberate soiling of surfaces with subsequent cleaning procedures. This work will be part of a subsequent project.

In addition, it was also investigated whether it is possible to carry out NDT measurements (Non-Destructive Test) on plastic welds. It succeeded in ultrasound measurements.

With the correct choice of ultrasonic head, it is possible to find common welding defects. But it is unfortunately not sufficient to find the faults, they must also be quantified via knowledge of size, location and cause in order to be able to assess whether it has an impact on the cleanliness of the area in question. It is recommended that further work be carried out with the Time of Flight Diffraction (TOFD) method.

The project has been of great value to the participating companies, as we have worked here with the analysis of problems that are extremely relevant so that we can improve the high hygiene standard that we fortunately already have in the Danish food and pharmaceutical industry.

A report describing the project has been prepared.

DMN members can read publications about the project in Danish here >

For further information, please contact:

• Dorte Walzl Bælum
• Network Director
• B.Sc. Chem. Eng., M.Sc. in Business
• M: 60 35 19 90
• E: dwb@dmn-net.com