Concrete protective liners are also widely used in industry, and in a wide variety of industries. These industries can encompass anything from chemical plants, mining, landfills, and aquaculture and fish farming.
Let’s examine a chemical plant. In this application, perhaps you are developing a chemical that is corrosive to concrete, or maybe you’re using other corrosive chemicals to make a product. Either way, you have to make sure you have a sound way of storing those chemicals. One, you can’t allow those chemicals to escape into the environment and contaminate the groundwater. Secondly, you can’t allow those chemicals to corrode your infrastructure that you’ve built within your industry. You don’t want to have to stop making whatever you’re making in that industry.
When an industry approaches AGRU about using the appropriate concrete protective liner, there’s a number of things we look at: First, we need to know the chemical that will be contained. Second, we need to know the concentration of that chemical. Third, we need to know the temperature.
When we’re dealing with polyolefins, including polyethylene and polypropylene, they are resistant to a wide range of chemicals. They have a little different temperature range. The first one we examine is polyethylene, because it’s the most cost effective. But, with polyethylene, the temperature is good until about 140 F operating temperature. After that, we can step up to polypropylene. Polypropylene gets us to around 195 F. If the temperature goes beyond that, we’ll need to look fluoropolymers such as PVDF or ECTFE. At this point, the cost goes up, but it may be what’s necessary to protect your environment and to keep your facility operating appropriately.
When selecting the appropriate concrete protective liner for your project, one thing you may want to consider is an electro conductive polyethylene. We might use this material if there is potential for an explosion that might be set off by a static electricity charge. By using an electro conductive polyethylene, we can ground the whole liner system to ensure that doesn’t happen.
If an engineer wanted to know more about concrete protective liners, I would recommend contacting an AGRU representative. If you call us, we can talk about your specific application, your specific conditions, and determine the right material for you.
