Product Description
Alfa Laval AB (Lund, Sweden; U.S. operations historically in Richmond, VA and Warminster, PA) allegedly manufactured and distributed plate heat exchangers (PHEs) throughout the mid-twentieth century for refinery lean/rich amine service, dairy pasteurization, chemical process cooling, and marine lube-oil duty. Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that the peripheral gaskets installed in each PHE plate groove were manufactured from compressed asbestos fiber (CAF) elastomer-bonded sheet stock through the late 1980s, and that Alfa Laval supplied replacement gasket sets and re-gasketing kits into aftermarket service well after original installation.
Because PHE service requires periodic gasket replacement — typically every 12 to 36 months in fouling process streams — plaintiffs alleged that Alfa Laval’s aftermarket gasket kits were a recurring asbestos-exposure source for the same worker crews across decades.
Workers Exposed
Plaintiffs allegedly identified the following trades as exposed during Alfa Laval PHE service:
- Refinery millwrights and mechanics scraping baked-on gasket residue from stainless plates with hand tools during turnaround.
- Dairy and food-plant maintenance workers re-gasketing PHE stacks after clean-in-place cycles.
- Pipefitters and boilermakers disassembling PHE frames for plate inspection.
- Marine engineers servicing shipboard PHE lube-oil coolers.
Alleged exposure mechanisms included dry-scraping cured elastomer/asbestos strip, wire-brushing plate grooves, and cutting replacement gasket sheet stock to length on the deck plate.