SAFE DISPENSING OF TRICHLOROETHYLENE

A leader in the engineering, environmental and remedial construction industries and provides a wide variety of services including site development, planning and engineering design, construction phase services, environmental services and facilities operations and maintenance services. Their laboratories use a number of chemicals for analysis including trichloroethylene, a dangerous chlorinated solvent.

Worker safety around trichloroethylene is always a huge consideration – as you know the vapors are even more dangerous than the fluid itself. At the Phoenix lab, the manager had tried numerous pumps over the last 10 years. The inexpensive plastic pumps broke down and need to be thrown away; Other pumps leaked around their seals, which exposed the workers to vapors and the chemical. The siphon pumps take a long time to fill a container. The manager finally got the mechanics of using a rotary pump down to a fine art.  Training workers on the rotary pump, however, was a time consuming job, and there were frequent failures and spills which were dangerous. Plus, even these metal pumps would break down and have to be replaced. And then there was the issue of disposal of the hazardous waste. He has found that by using GoatThroat, the new transfer pump, the training was reduced to about 10 minutes, there are no leaks around the seals and no vapors are released, his workers have control over the volume dispensed, and there is no more hazardous waste.