Long term insulation reliability challenges countless industries, with the primary failure mode being corrosion under insulation (CUI). With undetected CUI, leaking and defects can lead to catastrophic events, revenue loss, and considerable repair costs. Dow is taking a multi-generation approach to develop low VOC, waterborne silicone-based binders for sprayable thermal insulation coatings (TIC) to address unmet, and costly needs related to CUI remediation, process control, and energy savings.
The new technology couples the unique, intrinsic properties of silicone with a versatile application method to overcome the performance and application deficiencies of incumbent organic-based spray applied, and mechanical insulations. Current organic sprayable insulations lack in long-term CUI protection, can suffer from poor UV-resistance, and are limited in single-coat application thickness with concerns of sagging, slow and/or lack of drying, water entrapment, and mud-cracking. Mechanical insulation often comes with installation hazards and implicit long-term performance uncertainty with moisture ingress and undetectable corrosion propagation.
Silicone polymers bring unique properties to coatings; the Si-O-Si bond energy and polymeric chain arrangements enable coatings to have excellent UV resistance, water repellency, high flexibility, low viscosity, and the ability to resist higher temperatures. Liquid application eliminates hazards associated with installing mechanical insulation and offers a monolithic approach to providing thermal insulation for personnel protection and energy efficiency to a wide range of equipment and processes, including the ability to insulate “odd” shaped piping, complex geometries, and difficult-to-reach locations.
This presentation will briefly introduce our multi-generation platform, with the primary focus being on our new first-generation product proven to substantially reduce likelihood of CUI in the temperature range of concern. The new binder technology and formulation development enables single-coat application thicknesses up to 20x incumbent spray-applied insulation. It provides opportunity to significantly reduce labor costs and asset downtime associated with installation.
Along with innovative binder solutions, this presentation will unveil a step-change improvement in corrosion analysis. Dow developed an innovative approach to quantify corrosion objectively, a significant transformation to data-driven analysis and decision making.