In recent years, the global trend of restricting PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) has become increasingly clear. Meanwhile, end consumers are paying growing attention to drinking water safety and environmental standards, driving continuous upgrades in material selection for related products. Against this backdrop, European and American pump and valve customers have put forward higher requirements for precision rubber seals used in key sealing positions. On the basis of ensuring stable sealing performance, the seals must be BPA-free, comply with the LFGB food contact standard, and adopt a fluorine-free material formulation. This shift indicates that the material selection logic for seals is gradually changing from the traditional "performance first" to "equal emphasis on performance, safety and environmental protection".
To meet these new requirements, Doit Rubber Products Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "DOIT") has carried out collaborative development with material suppliers and leading customers in the pump and valve industry. In the project, material suppliers are responsible for providing fluorine-free modified formulation solutions; DOIT conducts formula adjustment, material mixing and process control based on the formulation, and completes seal molding; customers then carry out complete machine assembly and application testing and verification. After 12 months of collaborative promotion in material development, process adaptation and terminal testing, the relevant solutions have been gradually implemented.
The seals developed with this formulation are mainly used in key sealing nodes of the internal waterway systems of water dispensers and coffee machines, and are widely applied to dynamic and static sealing parts of pump and valve components. They are key components in direct long-term contact with drinking water. In such application scenarios, seals not only need to have basic sealing performance, but also meet stricter usage requirements, including stability during long-term contact with drinking water, structural reliability under thermal cycling conditions, and continuous resilience performance in high-temperature environments.
Achieving stable and reliable performance under a fluorine-free material system is the core technical difficulty of this development. In the scenario of pump and valve dynamic sealing applications, the resilience stability and sealing reliability of materials under repeated start-stop and pressure fluctuations are particularly critical. Compared with traditional fluorine-containing materials, fluorine-free materials need optimized compensation through formulation and process in terms of temperature resistance, chemical stability and compression set control. Meanwhile, the strict restrictions of the LFGB standard on material components and migrants have imposed higher compliance requirements on the entire production process. The large-scale application of fluorine-free materials is essentially a systematic verification and breakthrough in material system, mixing process and molding stability.
After one year of repeated production and testing, this food-grade sealing solution has passed customer application verification and meets the established usage requirements and relevant standards. This proves that seals meeting BPA-free and food contact standards can also achieve stable and reliable application performance under strict performance and regulatory constraints.
From the perspective of industry development, DOIT's practice has further verified the application feasibility of food contact standard-compliant sealing solutions in the high-end water equipment field. With the continuous tightening of environmental regulations and the increasing market attention to healthy and sustainable materials, the development direction of seal materials is accelerating the transformation to safety and environmental protection.
In this process, DOIT has completed the verification from material adaptation to mass production feasibility, further enhanced its customized sealing solution capability in the high-standard food contact application field, and also provided a reference path for material selection and application of food contact seals in pump, valve and fluid control equipment.