Wastewater Polyurea Coatings

Let’s start with some general facts:

Many people are well aware that our water usage is increasing, and at the same time, our water availability is decreasing. Many water treatment plants available today have been in service for over 30 years, and our infrastructure is beginning to deteriorate. Choices of building new facilities or retrofitting old w are individual water authority requirements. But we know that in the year 2020, it cost roughly one hundred and twenty-six billion dollars to maintain our water systems. So you can see there’s quite an opportunity for Polyurea in these new builds or retrofits. 

So what does that mean for “Polyurea”?

 It’s an opportunity for this technology to extend the life of existing water treatment structures. It can delay, fight, or control common corrosion issues. It needs to assist the water engineers in cost savings with long-term results.

What do we know about Polyurea? 

It is zero VOCs and 100 percent solid. It consists of two components, the reaction of an isocyanate and an amine resin, and it is 100 percent reactive; the speed is quite quick in tack-free and cure; we can have systems that will react tack-free in a matter of seconds and after two minutes as a very low rating, which will have excellent resistance to hydrogen sulfide. 

Bedliners to wastewater treatment plants; Polyurea is used on a wide range of properly prepared concrete and steel surfaces. As we’ll show you, it’s used as a coating for a broad range of applications. 

Let’s look at what will be or what could be in the water as it enters the treatment plan.

We know that the chemical compositions of what can go into the water have changed dramatically over the years. We can get a chemical attack in many forms. Biogenic corrosion, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, inorganic acids, a combination of concrete, vapor phase sulfate attack, abrasion chloride inducing deterioration and weathering. 

Depending on the plant process, every plant’s going to have an affluent. Even with the industrial community’s best efforts, we continue to have contamination. During disasters, these affluents can lead to spills which means they can get into our water system.

Benefits of Polyurea in these systems. 

We all know one thing about concrete: it will crack. It’s going to cause shrinkage of the concrete, starting the deterioration process of the walls. This is when we implement the application of Polyurea over the concrete. As the crack develops, we can maintain the coating continuity by ASTM standards, up to one-eighth-inch crackdown minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Polyurea has a high level of flexibility; systems can range from 200 to 500 percent larger. Previous coatings applied in these systems were thin film with lower elongation, five to ten percent elongation.

Where “polyurea” can be used in the water treatment plants

There are so many variations of wastewater treatment plants, but this is a general one that is also very simple to explain.

In the image above, you see raw sewage is coming into the treatment process. You have your grip change, and then you start into your primary clarifier.

Operation

Moving towards the right secondary clarifier. Then you’ll have your water disinfection section. Which is then used in golf courses; it can be used in portable water and back into our environment. Moving back to the center, you’ll see that then the sludge is removed. And it’s concentrated and can be put into either drying ponds or landfills where the methane gas can be generated to generate electricity. So the next several slides we’re going to go through will break the sections out, and we’ll show you where Polyurea can be used.

It sets out a scope for the Tank coating specification. It breaks this water treatment system down into the following items: the very beginning collection systems, preliminary treatment centers, and primary and secondary treatment centers.

The first thing in the process is going to be your collection systems. These include your mantels in English stations, pump stations, tunnels, and interceptors. This is going to take the macro water from the environment and start to direct it towards the wastewater plant. 

These collection systems have to withstand not only the materials but also the abrasion potential within those systems. We moved into the plant and are in a preliminary treatment system area; on the left is the first line of defense, if you will, where we’re the screening instructions. These are going to take out any of the materials that the plant cannot treat. You’re going to be in chambers where you’ll have Satterley. And headworks. On the right, so there can be some abrasions, there could be some.

The normal chemicals and composition of the water at this point is a fairly aggressive area of the plant. Then you move into the secondary treatment systems here; you’ll have your operation bases and. Have secondary clarifies that this is why very often you’re going to see the. A buddy of steel and concrete from the scammer’s, the mixer’s, etc. You will also encounter the sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, the two concentrations, and the abrasions distance of the settling solids.

Clearly, in the solids handling areas, you’re getting a lot denser material. They used to be very aggressive on the sides of tanks and the equipment. The digesters and dewatering structures. Finally, going to get into the story, we’ll have “secondary oil containment.” You may have holding ponds or just bottled water storage, and clearly, these need to be maintained, and you do not want to lose that valuable water at this point. Polyurea is used in the physical side of concrete storage tanks and your houses as if you will, +secondary +containment are lying.

Polyurea is sprayed over Geotech style and used to line a large pit like this; they will process this water in many water treatment plants. To. Drinking water category. In these cases, +tank +coating that’s being used. In the process are going to have to have an SIRC NSF sixty-one-point-five approval. And these can be obtained from several US testing labs, NSF, Truesdale, United Labs, and others. Outside the US, you have the standard Council of Canada, which will accept the US testing.

Anywhere drinking water will come in contact with whatever surface. These will have to be coated with portable, waterproof material protection barriers, sewer coatings on the walls, ceilings, and floors. If they’re exposed to the water, your joints and sealants need to have a. Mechanical devices replumbing. 

Potable water testing is done to identify any long-term effects emanating from the composition of the coating. The counting is submitted to these independent labs for testing.

And they will measure over some time. Any contaminants that can come out of that “deck coating” into the water? Typically, these are done at twenty-three degrees C laboratory conditions. It can also be requested at higher temperatures, for example, 30 degrees C. Because we know that most of these plants are not run at laboratory conditions and will heat up. In the sun, in the summer, etc., this can affect when you are.

Reviewing a [polyurea coating] system. You will notice that the reports will come back. And it will provide certifications based on a particular temperature and may indicate the minimum “deck coating” area. And dilution factor. In other words, if a thane coating. System. If evaluated, it may have certain contaminants coming out of this “deck coating.” But if it’s used in a system that is five hundred thousand gallons, for example, the dilution factor. Maybe such that that particular accounting can be used.

It can’t be used at lower volumes because then the limits of the contaminants would exceed that of the certification. So. Recommending that one doesn’t just take the certification as is but looks at the values of that certification. Certification doesn’t end with just sending a product out for evaluation. Once that has been certified, then the specific equipment used to manufacture that product must be certified. So, for example, if you have two reactors and you certify that one.

You cannot use the other without being certified. Record keeping by the manufacturers is critical. So that if there are any questions, go back to the manufacturer and find out. How that material was processed and evaluated. And there’s always retesting and oddity by these facilities, by these organizations. Because it’s been “patio waterproofing” does not mean that a potable water polyurea. Does not act and provides the same performance as a nonportable what is Polyurea. It’s not going to be great in the movie; the performance will remain the same.

Some color variations, possibly, but the performance remained steady. It can be sprayed on a wide wide range of CSP profiles. It’s going to resist cracking. Still flexible and as flexible curing requirements, in other words, if you recall from our previous seminar, this can be applied down 20 degrees Fahrenheit, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And in high humidity, the atmospheres. And it can have a wide range of coding thicknesses depending on the specification. These can be done in one pass.

And it will extend the service life of the system. Let’s look at a couple of examples. This is a 60-year-old tank, five million gallons. And you can see on the bottom left the tank before any work being done on it, you see there, it’s an open-top tank. We have the steel pipe coming in from the concrete. And. This was beginning to deteriorate. So that was specified in Polyurea and this case, portable water polyurea as well as you can see in the center slide, they installed a roof with the supporting poles, et cetera.

This is a good example where Polyurea is very compatible with both the steel and the concrete services. And. As a result, on the right side of the screen, you can see that using Polyurea allowed this existing structure. It was out of compliance. They returned to service with the current regulations. The next is desalinization plants. Israel is very, very strong on developing these plants for their water supply; excuse me, in this case, this project was over a half-million square feet.

And they wanted all of the services in the pipe, water storage in the treatment section to have a portable water floor coating. Are part of a what is Polyurea was used. And went over all the variety of substrates, the concrete, the steel, et cetera, and they’re expecting at least a 20 year, five-year service life in this desalinization plant. OK. Moving to another area. UV treatment. It is beginning to gain much more approval. Around the country, it replaces the chlorination and chemical process steps; those steps are used to disinfect.

And to destroy microorganisms, pathogens, viruses, molds, etc. The movie is a cleaner method because you don’t have to go back and treat the chlorine or disinfection contaminants. The problem is that this is extremely intense. You see Balts that a place within the process. Three. And. The water can be no further away than three inches from each boat. This extreme you’ve intense like. It is very destructive to, for example, foxes and urethane coating; they’ll begin to break down in a matter of months.

Most people, if they’re looking at Tank coating. They’re going to ask, what does it cost per gallon? And for a lot of people, that’s the end of the discussion. Now, without getting into any pricing information here. Polyurea can be about the same or even, in some cases, lower per gallon than other systems.

However, in most cases, the specifications will require a thicker coating. And there we went through the reasons for that. But if you have a sick “deck coating,” then. Multiply that difference in thickness, and you say, oh, Polyurea is more expensive. In addition, many of the engineers and designers. Have a preconceived coding budget; either it’s a budget that they’ve used in the past. Orange, the budget they put in today for a process instituted in two to three years.

So we need to look at much more than just the cost per gallon of the system. And one of the big things is downtime. Most of these plants are continuous operations, and most of them are at near maximum design. So if you have to shot a tank or a firefighter down in the middle of your process, it’s going to be OK. Something has to be done with the water that would have gone into that tank. You can have many problems diverting these processed liquids, and you can have many operation instabilities as you do this maintenance.

So, therefore, you want to have. The shutdown, the preparation, and the counting of that day were as short as possible. We’re the pure Polyurea of this can be done. There’s a good example of a clarifier outside the United States that was done with Polyurea, and from the time the water was drained till the time the tank was clean, the surface was prepped. The Polyurea was put on the service, and it’s returned to service. It was all done within less than 48 hours.

Polyurea coatings service typically returns within four hours of coding, depending on the Polyurea’s formulation and composition. Looking at other systems, some of these pipeline coating systems can require the nonpolyurea ones can require twenty-four hours between Ricoh and maybe even up to a week before it can be returned to service. So you can see your cost savings of the “polyurea” system and these applications. So, in summary. Pure Polyurea offers very good solutions for a very large variety of protective coatings in a water treatment plant.

We talk about the last American quality, the ability to bridge cracks. We talked about a single application. Of building a high school coating without allowing. Or without incurring. Dry times before other occasions. The steel and concrete interface. Polyurea matches the CLTV, the Professional bed liner thermal expansion for steel-concrete very closely. We talk about reducing the downtime. And we talked about Polyurea; many polyurea options meet the NSF sixty-one-point five standards.

And finally, we talked about the extended service life of these codes.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified polyurea applicator click here. If you are looking for a certified polyurea applicator, click here.

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