William Blythe has a long history of working with customers to develop the products they need. Below are some case studies detailing how we have worked in collaboration with customers, simply click on the tiles to read more. The details of the customers and the specifics of the challenges are, by definition, confidential. They will, however, demonstrate how we could help you meet your technology challenges. So get in touch today to pose your challenge to the William Blythe team.
Improving Product and Process Safety
The ChallengeA customer ran a process that required the use of a chemical that is hazardous to human health. Despite their efforts, they were unable to engineer out employee contact with the chemical during the process.
Eliminating HazardsWilliam Blythe has a wealth of experience in post-synthesis enhancement techniques that can be used to modify materials to possess additional functionalities, including reducing the hazard profile whilst maintaining application performance.
Our SolutionBy understanding both the customers process and the hazardous nature of the chemical in question, William Blythe were able to produce a new grade of material that is now essential to the customer’s process. This illustrates how we work to tailor our products for each application and each customer.
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Continuous InnovationUtilising a decades worth of experience in manufacturing powders for absorbent applications, William Blythe took a step up the value chain in creating its own high capacity absorbent: DURAGUARD S100. The DURAGUARD absorbents are engineered to high porosities, enabling the removal of H2S impurities in gas streams to very low levels.
Customer EngagementIn 2017 we engaged with a gas plant who had a requirement to change-out their existing sulfur removal absorbent. Working with the plant we designed and fabricated a test reactor for use on site. This confirmed our laboratory results that the absorbent had excellent mechanical strength and H2S removal capability.
Rapid Product DevelopmentFollowing the successful on-site trial, the gas plant were confident in the DURAGUARD S100 absorbent and loaded a full charge to treat their feed gas steam. This is now a key growth area for William Blythe.
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Reducing the Risk of Change
Defining a Specification for a Critical Raw Material
The ChallengeSuccessful scale up of a new product requires an understanding of the specification of all chemicals involved in the process and also how deviations in these can affect application performance. It can be very difficult to build up a product specification during development work if the properties of the chemicals used are not understood.
Customer NeedA customer wanted to understand the properties of a future raw material so that the materials specification could be coupled with product performance. This would enable the definition of a desired specification for future volume supply.
Expert Quality ControlWilliam Blythe’s
analytical laboratory is equipped with advanced instrumentation and staffs highly trained analysts who have refined their skills over a number of years working on a range of inorganic materials. Using numerous analytical techniques, our analysts succeeded in understanding the materials properties, enabling the customer to correlate this to performance and exploit its disruptive technology.
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Powder Flowability The flowability of powders is an essential characteristic, especially in processes which use a dosing system. Powders can be prone to agglomeration causing blockages in production processes and resulting in costly production downtime. We were challenged to improve the flow characteristics of one of our products.
Our SolutionBy understanding the application and utilising our experience in inorganic materials manufacture, we were able to manipulate the physical characteristics to significantly improve the flowing aspects without altering the chemical composition and performance. This product is now used extensively by the customer, improving the dosing efficiencies and overall production operational efficiency.
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Product Modification to Improve Operation Efficiency
Resolving Production Scale-up Problems
The ChallengeA prospective customer required a new manufacturer to produce larger quantities of a maturing product. Transferring a process between manufacturers can result in product discrepancies due to a lack of understanding of the process from the originator.
Our SolutionWilliam Blythe’s expertise lies in manufacturing chemicals to consistently tight chemical and physical specifications throughout the whole scale up process. We worked extensively to understand all process parameters and their effect on the physical properties. This model of complete process and chemistry understanding is underlying throughout the whole William Blythe portfolio.
ConclusionWilliam Blythe were successful in both implementing a new product to the existing range and surpassing the original product performance parameters, giving the customer an improved product at the multi-tonne quantity scale.
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Collaborative InnovationAs a UK-based materials developer and supplier, William Blythe is a key partner for a number of SMEs across several advanced technology sectors as they refine and commercialise their technologies. We are flexible in our approach to collaboration and have been successful in several UK government InnovateUK funding proposals.
Ongoing ProjectWilliam Blythe is partnered to a project that has been granted funding to develop a new grade of material needed for its future customer’s revolutionary technology. The project includes a technology developer, materials manufacturer and a final customer, creating a robust supply chain which is often a critical success factor.
Supporting SMEsWilliam Blythe partners with SMEs to stay at the forefront of cutting edge technology and we are committed to continue developing relationships with SMEs.
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Partnering with Innovative SMEs
Contact us today for more information on any aspect of William Blythe.