Product Description
The Ingersoll-Rand Centac was a family of multi-stage, integrally-geared centrifugal air compressors widely installed as plant-air and process-air machines at refineries, petrochemical complexes, steel mills, glass plants, and general heavy industry from the 1950s through the 1980s. Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Centac units were originally packed with braided asbestos rope at the shaft-seal glands and sealed with compressed asbestos sheet gaskets at inter-stage casing joints, intercooler flanges, diffuser split lines, and cover bosses.
Every scheduled Centac overhaul allegedly required the shaft glands to be repacked — cutting fresh rings of asbestos rope packing from bulk stock and driving them into the gland — and every casing joint to have its old asbestos gasket scraped from the mating surface with knives and wire brushes before a fresh gasket was cut and installed. Both operations generated dry asbestos-fiber debris in the compressor room.
Workers Exposed
- Industrial mechanics performing Centac scheduled overhauls, gland repacks, and gasket renewals at refineries, chemical plants, and steel mills.
- Millwrights rigging Centac casings, gears, and intercoolers during major overhauls.
- Pipefitters (UA) breaking discharge, intercooler, and cooling-water piping into Centac units.
- Machinists rebuilding Centac impellers, seals, and bearings at shop and field.
- Instrument fitters working the associated control panels and gauge lines during compressor outages.
Bystanders in the compressor building were exposed to airborne fibers released by packing removal, gasket scraping, and sweep-up of debris.