Managing the powder coat waste stream: an industrial experimentation approach

Abstract

Despite acceptance as a functionally and economically competitive alternative to conventional liquid coating, waste generated during powder coating or powder coat waste (PCW) is a notable yet under-examined industrial waste stream. Globally, a large volume of PCW generated during surface finishing processes is landfilled as a fine powder containing microplastics, thereby impacting the environment adversely. In this paper, a step-by-step industrial experimentation methodology based on the principles of the Shainin Design of Experiment was proposed for exploratory experimentation. The proposed methodology offers a convergent approach for diagnostically reducing the process parameters to a controllable number by following a progressive search. A cluster of sanitary ware manufacturing units involved in the surface finishing process was selected as a case study for evaluating the proposed methodology. The results show conveyor hanger pitch, conveyor speed and spray gun pressure as the critical process parameter for dry film thickness (DFT) defect and resulting PCW.