CTMA Technology Competition Award Winner to Demonstrate at Norfolk
When Atmospheric Plasma Solutions won the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities Program (CTMA) Technology Competition at the 2019 CTMA Partners Meeting in May, they won more than a nice trophy. The win included $50,000 worth of funding and a one-year CTMA project with the DoD.
The judges at the competition immediately saw the benefits of Atmospheric Plasma Solutions’ coating removal technology and their enthusiasm has turned into “Validation of Efficiency and Effective Atmospheric Plasma Coating Removal,” a demonstration project that will take place at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in the next few weeks.
There is a need for cleaner, environmentally safe and cost-effective coating removal solutions. Today removing coatings is a costly, multi-step, time and labor consuming process. Many coating removal methods can cause substrate damage. In certain applications where grit and water blasting can’t be used, manual labor is often the only solution. Atmospheric Plasma Coating Removal (APCR) is a breakthrough de-painting technology that does not require media, requires no containment with no damage to the substrate. Using only air and electricity the PlasmaBlast® system converts a significant portion of the removed organic coating into water vapor and carbon dioxide. It leaves, behind a lower volume of solids of mostly inorganic pigments and fillers. It can be safely collected with a suitable HEPA vacuum virtually eliminating the need for containment.
Decision-makers at Norfolk Naval Shipyard will evaluate and validate the PlasmaBlast system for the following benefits:
- Environmentally friendly and safer for the operator
- Significantly reduces job costs
- Reveals substrate without change to profile
- Rugged, lightweight and portable use in the yards
- Media and chemical free with minimal cleanup
- Fast training, simple to operate and quick to mobilize
The DoD participants will be Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Lead), Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard (observer) Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (observer), Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (observer) and Letterkenny Army Depot. The developments will be readily transferred to other DoD facilities throughout the enterprise.
Updates on this exciting project will be published in upcoming issues of the CTMA Connector.