Saint-Gobain's Rulon® Cup Seals Continue to Improve Reliability in Portable Oxygen Concentrators

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. - March 31, 2015 - PRLog -- Saint-Gobain Seals’ Rulon® cup seals continue to contribute to improving the quality of life for many users of portable oxygen concentrators (POC), which deliver oxygen therapy at higher concentrations than typical ambient air.  Portable oxygen concentrators are smaller and much lighter than home oxygen concentrators and designed for mobility and flexibility in the form of a small cart with a retractable handle or as a shoulder bag.  Their usage increased in 2009 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved this equipment for use on board commercial aircraft.

The equipment typically utilizes an air compressor along with other parts such as a cylinder, valve and tubes.  The Rulon® cup seal is a crucial component of the compressor and serves a dual purpose: as a bearing to optimize piston movement up and down the cylinder wall and as a seal to prevent air from escaping the chamber while it is being compressed by the piston movement. Because of its very low friction, low heat, low noise, long wear life, and low maintenance, the Rulon® material (http://www.seals.saint-gobain.com/rulon-material-grades.aspx) is ideal for this application.  Saint-Gobain Seals’ engineering and manufacturing teams are able to provide either standard or customized solutions with hundreds of compositions available.

Although this equipment has been available for several decades, earlier versions were bulky and unreliable and did not improve until after 2000.  According to WinterGreen Research’s 2013 study of Oxygen Concentrators: Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2013 to 2019, “Oxygen concentrator markets [were] at $242.5 million in 2012 [and] are anticipated to reach $1.9 billion dollars by 2019.  Growth is a result of new competitors in the market, demand for the smaller lighter technology by patients, and the market need for greater mobility support for older people.”  As demand for these portable oxygen concentrator increases, manufacturers are focused on not only reducing costs, size and weight but also improving performance and reliability.

 Several benefits for manufacturers to use Rulon® cup seals include:

• Increased durability and reliability of the concentrators due to the material’s long wear life and low friction/heat

• Decreased total costs due to decreased post-sale costs

• Potential for lighter and smaller concentrators due to Saint-Gobain Seals’ ability to formulate optimal material and manufacture specific shapes

Saint-Gobain Seals’ Rulon® high-performance fluoropolymer compounds have also been used in other life sciences applications such as harmonic scalpels and chemical analyzers.  There are more than 100 standard Fluoroloy® and Rulon® grades available, several of which are FDA compliant and USP Class VI certified, making them well suited for medical and analytical equipment applications.

To learn more about Saint-Gobain Seals’ Rulon® product line, other product lines and its strategic business unit, visit www.seals.saint-gobain.com, follow their Twitter (@SGSeals) or connect on LinkedIn.

About Saint-Gobain Seals (http://www.seals.saint-gobain.com)

Saint-Gobain Seals is a strategic business unit under Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics’ Engineered Components SOA (sector of activity); our parent company, Saint-Gobain, is one of the world’s top 100 industrial groups and is celebrating its 350th Anniversary of manufacturing excellence in 2015.  With more than 50 years of manufacturing experience and an established global presence (with strategic sites in Garden Grove, California, USA; Kontich, Belgium; and Minhang, Shanghai, China), we offer a diverse range of innovative sealing and polymer solutions:

• OmniSeal® Spring–Energized Seals

• OmniLip™ PTFE Rotary Shaft Seals

• Rulon® High-Performance Fluoropolymer Compounds

• Meldin® 7000 Thermoset Polyimide Materials

• Meldin® HT High-Performance Thermoplastic Materials

Other products include Fluoroloy® (high-performance custom-formulated compounds), cup seals, hydraulic seals, metal seals, v-packings, piston rings, Marathon® (valves and vacuum pump diaphragms), Transband® (PTFE creepage band), custom parts, polymer bearings and stock shapes.

The majority of seals and polymer components manufactured are custom designed and matched with the best materials to optimize their performance in various applications and markets.