Oil Skimmer Extends Life of Parts Washer Fluid and Ends Recontamination

Like many metal working shops, Anderson Screw Products of Jamestown, New York, turned to aqueous parts cleaning because of limits imposed by the EPA on waste emissions.

The Problem

Anderson operates a 50,000 square foot plant with 65 machines, including a dozen or so parts washers – Magnus dip tanks filled with a mixture of water and cleaning compound. The cleaning compound utilizes oil/water separation chemistry. After three to four weeks however, there was so much oil on the surface that parts were becoming re-contaminated when removed from the parts washer.

The Solution: An Oil Skimmer for Parts Washers

To solve this problem, Anderson installed a Mighty Mini® belt oil skimmer manufactured by Abanaki Corporation. The skimmer operates on a motor and pulley system, using the differences in specific gravity and surface tension between oil and water to pick up oil, grease and other hydrocarbons as the belt passes through wash water. After the belt passes over the drive pulley, it travels through tandem wiper blades that scrape off the oil to be discharged. Discharge oil then flows into an Abanaki Oil Concentrator®, where any residual water picked up with the oil is separated and sent back to the wash tank. The water-free oil is then discharged into a separate waste oil container.

The trial use of the Abanaki unit proved that oil skimming could help extend the life of parts washer fluid by several weeks. Now, the average time between fluid replacements is three to four months. With this improvement, Anderson has quickly recovered the cost of the Abanaki Mighty Mini. Since installing the unit into a small cavity in the tank’s cover, recontamination of washed parts has also ceased to be a problem.

DOWNLOAD ABANAKI MIGHTY MINI® BELT OIL SKIMMER BROCHURE

Edited for length: Published in Modern Machine Shop