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Don’t get me unsuitable — with my background in and across the US army and motorsports, I do get it. Not less than, I assumed I did. I knew {that a} correctly sealed gas system, for instance, would preserve extremely poisonous Q16 race fuel from dripping onto my storage ground, the place a pet or child might get to it. I understood {that a} leak within the Worldwide Area Station (proven, above) might be a catastrophically dangerous factor, too. None of this stuff got here as a lot of a shock, however that’s not the large takeaway I obtained from Jim and SECO SEALS.
REAL SUSTAINABILITY
“Folks don’t perceive the significance of sealing the fuel and freon traces of their houses, for instance,” mentioned Scott, a couple of minutes into our dialog. “Yearly, virtually each dwelling with a fuel line has some nominal leak of chlorofluorocarbons (or, ‘CFCs’), from worn or defective connectors or improperly sealed home equipment. Added up over tens of thousands and thousands of houses, the quantity of fuel simply being leaked into the environment is unimaginable.”
CFCs, for these of you not within the know, are harmful chemical compounds that don’t simply have an effect on people who breathe them in — they damage each residing factor on Earth by inflicting holes within the atmospheric layer of ozone that helps defend the planet from dangerous ultraviolet radiation … and that’s simply the beginning of the potential havoc they wreak.
“Scientists first started to appreciate the potential for chlorine to work together destructively with ozone within the early Seventies … this hazard is a direct consequence of the truth that CFCs (which include carbon, fluorine and chlorine, are so inert,” writes Chris Deziel, in Sciencing. “As a result of they don’t react with something within the decrease environment, CFC molecules finally migrate to the higher environment, the place the solar’s radiation is intense sufficient to interrupt them aside. This produces free chlorine — a component that’s something however inert.”
Whereas CFCs have been largely banned within the Nineties, they’re nonetheless on the market in smaller quantities. What’s extra, the pure fuel generally used to energy cooking stoves, ovens, and water heaters additionally comprises dangerous “greenhouse gasses” that may speed up local weather change, however a correctly sealed system can drastically scale back what number of of those dangerous chemical compounds can get into the air … and the much less fuel that leaks out, the much less the house owner has to pay for!
“We’ve had a lot of individuals come again to us and inform us their fuel invoice has dropped considerably,” Scott supplied. “Typically their invoice is lower in half, and so they didn’t have to vary something about the way in which they lived. Only a couple {dollars}’ price of seals.”
WHY ISN’T THIS REQUIRED?
I can save a whole bunch of {dollars} and dramatically scale back dangerous carbon emissions with just a few {dollars}’ price of SECO SEALS in my home equipment? The place do I enroll, proper!? However, maybe a greater query is: why isn’t this stage of “100% leak-proof sealing” required? Like, by legislation?
“A few of it’s training,” explains Scott. “We attempt to get the phrase out, however we’re engineers. The fellows and gals right here (I recommended that “guys” was gender impartial —Ed.), they do nice work sealing up reusable rocket engines, fighter jets, racecars, and oxygen respiratory programs for deep sea divers and submarines and oil platforms — every thing that wants 100% certainty on sealing. However the aerospace group is so much smaller than the development or dwelling enchancment market.”
To assist make issues simpler, SECO SEALS has developed a lot of standardized seals that can be utilized by builders and housing authorities with minimal influence of their procurement course of. “They only order our half as a substitute of the plastic washer or no matter they’re ordering now,” explains Scott. “Now they’re utilizing the identical type of precision crush gasket in a flare tube Becoming —the identical form we provide to main aerospace corporations like Boeing, Lockheed, NASA, Bell, Northrop, and Raytheon, the place our seals are normal.”
“The place do you begin, although?” I ask him. “If I’m a home-owner, can I simply name a handyman or contractor to come back in and put these seals in my home?”
“Certain,” he says. “You may need to inform them the place to purchase the components, however that’s it.”
“What concerning the large guys? Grocery shops and ‘large field’ shops which have large HVAC programs and meals freezers and all that?” I ask.
“Completely,” Scott says. “These giant programs have the largest potential for leaks, and the largest potential to scale back emissions and get monetary savings.”
ENOUGH SALES PITCH, WHERE’S THE SCI-FI?
We went on like this for some time, speaking about all of the totally different potential functions and financial savings for SECO SEALS’ ultra-effective sealing expertise — however then discuss turned to one thing that basically obtained us each going: area flight, and the way SECO SEALS was working with each NASA and personal spaceflight corporations to develop components and instruments that might truly be created in area.
“You don’t wish to take a complete lot of instruments and components with you into area,” supplied Scott. “For one factor, you don’t know what’s going to break. What if you happen to deliver the unsuitable factor? What if one half breaks time and again, and also you don’t deliver sufficient of them, however you have got three of a component you by no means want? That’s what the push for 3D printing and these machinable — let’s name them ‘DuPont or skunkworks-type’ supplies do.”
Scott went on to explain next-gen supplies that might absorbed warmth and temperature-related warping (which, after all, might result in leaks) like ceramics, however which might be machined like metals. “Or, at the least, dense plastics,” he clarified.
Jim Scott; picture courtesy Seco Seals / Rusty Humphries
“That is the type of factor that may save lives,” Scott explains. “You want a component on Mars, for instance, you may obtain the half from a SolidWorks library that has all our normal SECO SEALS in it already, to make issues simpler for engineers, and so they can put this materials in a lathe and machine the half they want proper there. They don’t have to move something further or handle a listing or something. Easy.”
That standardization and open entry to SECO SEALS’ distinctive components catalog — which has been in fixed growth since Jim Scott’s father began SECO SEALS in 1969 — is the important thing to that “actual world” accessibility, making it simple for engineers in each area to rapidly and successfully handle leaks of their initiatives.
For extra about SECO SEALS, click on right here to go to their web site: https://secoseals.com/
This text is supported by Seco Seals; featured picture by way of the European Area Company, below a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
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