[column]BP Refinery Rotterdam has commissioned Van der Ende to coat all tanks and underground storage pits of the Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) project at the Refinery, a concrete area of nearly 7,000m2, with a 2mm thick layer of Polyurea. A complex project, with a very short lead time of barely ten weeks. At the time of writing this article, the project is just about finished and we can look back on a job that went perfectly.
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[column]An additional challenge proved to be to first level the internal concrete walls of the treatment tanks with a layer of Epoflex after grit blasting. Setting up over 5,000 kg with hand shavings proved to be a tremendously labor-intensive activity that we had little to no experience with. But after treating nearly 7,000 square meters, we have now trained a couple of top-level flat chip specialists.
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[column]PPolyurea is a reaction of two chemicals (Isocyanate and Amine 1:1, solvent free) that after reaction form a durable and elastic polymer. Polyurea is sprayed with high duty hot airless pumps. In the pump housing, the two separate components are heated to 70°C, then mixed into a fraction in the spray gun. After mixing the components (this is done at a tremendous rate of twelve liters per minute), a thermal reaction of the product occurs and the temperature rises to 74°C. As a result, the Polyurea is cured and loadable within five seconds.
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