Effective anti-corrosion product for buried pipes
Sigma Paints has developed an effective approach for the protection of buried pipelines and said the product has already been marketed throughout the Middle East.
Sigma sources said the company has been approached by a Qatari-based contractor which faced the problem of having to apply a compatible, site applied lining to the girth weld joints of a FBE (Fusion Bonded Epoxy) coated pipeline.
The obvious difficulty involved the impracticality of getting a FBE field jointing machine on to the site in the middle of the desert, with the additional problem that the FBE requires for the pipe to be heated up to a fusion temperature of 300 degrees centigrade as well as a closed dust free atmosphere to be applied in. These conditions are obviously extremely difficult to meet on any site.
“When Sigma Paints approached the Contractor, they were in the process of qualifying a cold applied coating for field application with similar bonding & performance properties to the FBE,” a Sigma source said.
Sigma paints proposed its 7497 Sigmarite EPH. It is a 2 pack cold applied solvent free Phenolic epoxy coating with outstanding chemical resistance…It is a durable and flexible coating and is recommended to be applied (in these circumstances in one coat of 500 microns DFT) direct to a blast cleaned steel surface. It also has excellent bonding properties to the existing FBE (on the overlap) as well as PP linings.
The contractor chose to use the 7497 Sigmarite EPH on the field joints of the FBE line. Especially because of its ability to be applied on site and in site at very high substrate temperatures (upto 90 Deg. C) in confined places . its excellent edge coverage compared to solvent coatings is also an attarctive feature. Being a solvent free epoxy also makes the Sigmarite EPH a safer and environmentally friendly choice due to the absence of volatile & harmful solvents. “The result was that Sigmarite EPH is now being applied to buried pipelines for several other Qatar based companies as well as in other countries throughout the Middle East,” said the company
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