Atmospheric Plasma Depainting

WP-1762

Objective

The U.S. Navy and other Department of Defense (DoD) components have a critical need for high performance, environmentally friendly coatings removal from multiple platforms. Coating removal processes currently used throughout DoD produce large quantities of hazardous wastes such as spent blast media, wastewater, and toxic chemicals. When disposing of these waste products, DoD is burdened with high costs and intense scrutiny under environmental regulations. Additional costs are incurred to inventory, store, and handle media before use and to contain and collect the waste media prior to disposal. Current technologies--wet or dry media blasting, mechanical sanding, laser ablation, induction heat depainting, FlashJet™ technology, and chemical stripping--have limited flexibility as a complete coatings removal solution.

The overall objective of this project is to develop an innovative media-free atmospheric plasma (AP) based coating removal system for use on DoD ships and vehicle platforms. This system will be capable of selectively removing individual coating layers or partial layers, will be portable, and will not damage the underlying substrate. This project will also investigate a number of promising extensions to the core AP technology, providing an even more versatile tool for environmentally benign, media-free coating removal across multiple platforms.

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Technical Approach

The project team will develop a coatings removal system based on AP technologies, specifically a system known as PlasmaFlux™. This broadly applicable system has demonstrated removal of DoD, industrial, and commercial coatings. It uses a low pressure compressed air source and electricity to produce a special form of air plasma that is highly chemically active and attacks (oxidizes) the organic components of paints and other coatings. In the process, much of the removed coating is converted to harmless gases such as water vapor and carbon dioxide. The remaining solids left behind are primarily pigments and fillers, which can be safely contained with a suitable high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuum or the waste collection component of the U.S. Navy's Automated Paint Application, Containment and Treatment System (APACTS). Researchers will determine the capabilities of AP by preparing and analyzing substrate condition after paint removal, perform spectroscopic studies and computational fluid dynamics modeling to characterize the AP plume, and integrate the results into a large area plasma system and hybrid module.

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Benefits

AP coating removal technology offers a dry, media-free process that reduces the volume of solid waste, leading to substantial environmental benefits, significantly lowered costs, and higher overall process efficiency as compared to currently used processes. AP technology is extremely versatile, with demonstrated effectiveness across a wide range of substrates, coating types, and removal conditions. The AP coating removal system developed in this project will be usable in both an appropriately scalable high-rate, large area mode applicable to ship hulls, aircraft fuselages, and ground vehicle bodies and in a lower-rate precision mode applicable in tight areas, on parts of complex geometry, and to small-scale touch-up work. AP also has the demonstrated capability to remove only a desired partial thickness of the coating material ("skimming") or to selectively remove one or more outer layers in a multilayer coating system. Due to the clean, active, and chemically reactive nature of the plasma, contaminants such as oils, fuels, and hydraulic fluid are removed and surfaces can be activated for adhesive bonding applications. In many cases immediately following treatment, the surface is left in a state where new coating material can be applied with no further processing required. (Anticipated Project Completion - 2014)

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Points of Contact

Principal Investigator

Dr. Jerry Cuomo

North Carolina State University

Phone: 919-515-7218

Fax: 919-513-0770

Program Manager

Weapons Systems and Platforms

SERDP and ESTCP

Document Types

  • Fact Sheet - Brief project summary with links to related documents and points of contact.
  • Final Report - Comprehensive report for every completed SERDP and ESTCP project that contains all technical results.
  • Cost & Performance Report - Overview of ESTCP demonstration activities, results, and conclusions, standardized to facilitate implementation decisions.
  • Technical Report - Additional interim reports, laboratory reports, demonstration reports, and technology survey reports.
  • Guidance - Instructional information on technical topics such as protocols and user’s guides.
  • Workshop Report - Summary of workshop discussion and findings.
  • Multimedia - On demand videos, animations, and webcasts highlighting featured initiatives or technologies.
  • Model/Software - Computer programs and applications available for download.
  • Database - Digitally organized collection of data available to search and access.