Atmospheric Plasma System provides surface cleaning.
Press Release Summary:
Eliminating need for chemicals or solvents, environmentally friendly DC-PlasmaTEC System produces no bi-products or hazardous waste. Plasma treatment combines kinetic energy, high electrical energy, airflow, and micro-thermal shock, lifting contamination from surface. It does not alter surfaces being cleaned, so there is no color fading, abrasion, or pitting. In addition to cleaning metals, DC-PlasmaTEC can be used on plastic, rubber, and composite materials.
Original Press Release:
Environmental-Friendly Surface Cleaning
In order to achieve proper adhesion of coatings and glues on metal surfaces, surface cleaning is a necessity. Atmospheric plasma is one of the most effective and environmental friendly methods of metal surface cleaning.
Tantec's atmospheric Plasma system, DC-PlasmaTEC, is a new fast and reliable surface treatment process, and one of the best available non-chemical surface cleaning techniques for metals, and the fact that no chemicals or solvents are involved, makes it a very environmental-friendly cleaning method with no bi-products or any
hazardous waste products to dispose of.
Normally, electrical Plasma-treaters work only in a low-pressure environment, i.e. in a vacuum chamber, however, the new DCPlasmaTEC-discharge is a potential-free gas produced at atmospheric pressure.
What is Plasma? When air or gas is subjected to an electric DC-field, some of its atoms become ions, and the air is said to be ionized. Very strong ionized air is transformed to be a gas in its normal condition and can conduct electrical current to a limited extent. If the electric field becomes extreme, like in a DC-PlasmaTEC nozzle,
many of the atoms become ions. The resulting super-ionized gas is a Plasma, which can conduct a large and sustained electric current. Plasma is more than just a gas; Plasma is the fourth stateof-matter, developed through the other three state-of-matter, solid, liquid and gas. About 99% of the visible universe is formed of plasma.
When the Plasma-discharge is exposed to a contaminated metal surface, the cleaning effect is extremely efficient, and in some cases proven better than chemical etching. Plasma-treatment does not alter the surfaces being cleaned; no colour fading, no abrasion or pitting of the surface takes place. The process is a combination of kinetic energy, high electrical energy, airflow and micro-thermal shock lifting off the
contamination on the surface.
The applications of a DC-PlasmaTEC system is not limited to metals, but can also be utilized on plastic, rubber and composite materials. For those materials the Plasma treatment serves another purpose, to promote better adhesion properties of plastic or rubber through surface modification and activation, i.e. the same as achieved with other renowned pre-treatment methods like Corona or vacuumplasma technologies.
Industrial applications for the DC-PlasmaTEC system is ultra-cleaning of metal head gaskets for automotives, cleaning of stainless steel spacer bars for insulating glass, cleaning of sealing joints on castmetals prior to dispensing reactive resins.
