PRE-TREATMENT , SURFACE PREPARATION , DEGREASING & CLEANING
“ Every new beginning comes from some other beginning ’ s end .” – So long , Trichloroethylene
Richard Starkey , Sales Manager UK , Ireland and Scandinavia , SAFECHEM
“ TRIC ! Isn ’ t that stuff banned !?” I have long lost count of the number of times I was confronted with this question from prospects , to which the answer has always been No ( albeit that negation being tied to conditions ). But that is until 22 October 2020 , where the use of Trichloroethylene ( TRIC ) in industrial parts cleaning in the UK is – for once and for all – no longer permissible .
The penning of this article , a miniretrospective on TRIC , is something rather personal to me . Not least because I have spent a large part of my career educating clients on the benefits and risks associated with solvents , in particular TRIC , and most importantly , how these chemicals could be handled safely in metal degreasing . The recollection of TRIC being the dominant solvent in the mid-90s , where I first joined the chemical industry , is still vivid and present in my mind .
Pioneered by the once largest manufacturer in Britain , Imperial Chemical Industries ( ICI ), during the 1920s , the development of TRIC was hailed as an anaesthetic revolution . Originally thought to possess less hepatotoxicity than chloroform , and without the unpleasant pungency and flammability of ether , TRIC ( not to get confused with 1,1,1-trichloroethane ) has been used for many applications ranging from oil extraction and dry cleaning to anaesthetic and coffee decaffeination for over a century .
Perhaps the greatest use of TRIC has been as a degreaser for metal parts . The demand for TRIC as a degreaser began to decline in the 1950s in favour of the less toxic 1,1,1-trichloroethane . However , 1,1,1-trichloroethane production was phased out in most of the world under the terms of the Montreal Protocol due to its ozone depleting properties . As a result , TRIC regained the honour of being the solvent of choice for metal degreasing .
Since then the industry has benefitted from its unique physical properties that have cleaned and degreased metal components used in safety critical devices for aerospace , defence , medical , pharmaceutical and many other applications where the surface cleanliness of the metal part was paramount .
In the mid 1990 ’ s , the vast majority of companies were still using open top vapour degreasers . TRIC was transferred from traditional floor standing 200 litre steel drums to the degreaser . I say “ transferred ”, as to see the solvent pumped was fairly rare , as most of the time it was decanted into a bucket or a smaller can and poured over the top .
Not surprisingly , such rather crude handling slowly began to draw attention . As legislation on Health and Safety proliferated in the mid-late 80s , aided by the technological advancements in testing chemicals for health effects , TRIC was re-classified in 2001 to a Cat 1b Carcinogenic . All be it controversial at the time , the legislation started to bite , meaning that the substance had to be enclosed as best as practicable .
It was around this time that the German company SAFECHEM , which I joined in 2003 , entered the UK . Now an independent company ,
32 OCTOBER 2020 twitter : @ surfaceworldmag