Paint /sandblasting regulatory requirements, rules, limits, permitt? 4

[yuvivien212]

We would like to improve the painting and sandblasting process and meet related requirements in one of our (boiler/pressure vessel) shop located in Ohio.
I am gathering information on the regulatory requirements, rules, limits, permitting, etc.(from EPA, OhioEPA,DEC), unluckily, the huge amount of information disorientated me.
I am wondering if any gentlemen can guide me or gave me some suggestions/tips on the regulatory requirements, and how to meet these requirements.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

[unclesyd]

rmw,
I have done quite a bit of in process blasting in order to improve the existing system. This was at my work and 2 paint and contract coating companies, along with a lot of work around the shipyard. My primary association in the company was to keep our blasting process up to date. All our polymer piping after heat cleaning has to be cleaned by blasting. In this area I worked with the Cataphote company and the first glass beads on the market. The beads light green as they were made from Coke bottles. when I fist went to work they were using river sand and I introduce the to sub-angular sand, Dawes. The kicker was that this sand was being used by the production people. I brought in the fidst Black Beauty material. I had the blasting room enlarge to a drive in type and put a true recovery unit on it. i did a lot of test work on cleaning 16 Autoclaves that had to be blast cleaned at every overhaul. During this peroid I proved that Al2O3 in the hands of a good operator was not only faster but also took off less metal. My job also was to keep the wolves from our door. Unofficially I was the go to person on any type cleaning. i was instrumental in getting HP Water, UHP water. the use of CO2, Plastic Grit, and Corn Cobs, along with several other processes.

I posted above about a sandblaster can cost you money there was particular incident while we were using sand and since it has less cleaning power it would gradually erode our polymer piping to the point where replacement was necessary to replace same. We had to 4" Sch 160 ells in a jacketed pipe spool, On each production line. At one time we were on a very tight schedule to get the line overhaul to avoid working on a thanksgiving holiday. We an attempt was made to vacuum checks the Therminol side they could get no vacuum. When our group was called they were planning to teat the whole line down, but I convinced them to take out just the elbows and lo and behold there a 1" hole in each new elbow. I immediately went to blasting area and before I could get out of truck I saw the problem. One system they were using the remote valve was broken so to turn off the sand you had to go and dump the sand pot and dump the air. While the blaster was doing this he would stick the nozzle in whatever pipe he was blasting in order to walk over and dump the air. This particular operator stopped and lite a cigarette.
This incident was what stated me on upgrading the blasting personnel and convincing Operations to go to glass beads even though he cost was about 5 times the sand.


Sorry about the hijack of the thread.

 

[rmw]

Trottiey, after you spelled out that long horrible word, I am suddenly feeling ill....

Sorry, this is back on Topic:

Among the other things mentioned in this thread, I seem to remember that one thing that doomed abrasive blasting with silica sand was that minute particles of silica sand would imbed themselves in the metal surface which caused other problems down the road. I can't seem to find any reference to that in the various sources for abrasive blasting materials.

Sand blasting was abandonned so many years ago in my prior experience for other and better media types that I can't remember all the reasons it was such a bad actor.

Anybody remember such a thing?

rmw

 

[unclesyd]

rmw,
This was a concern during the time when sand was used as the blasting media. From what little work I did on the problem it appeared that due to the sand not cutting the metal instead it rolled the metal around due to long dwell times trapping small sand particles. This was especially true on SS and the low CS. I have never seen this problem when using Al2O3 as it readily cuts the metal.