Fluor Corporation has announced that Stork, a Fluor company, has been awarded a 2-year contract for inspections, surveillance and quality assurance services by Babcock International Group, covering various sites in the United Kingdom, including Babcock’s Rosyth site, as well as other global locations. Babcock’s Rosyth site is one of the largest waterside manufacturing and repair facilities in the UK. This new specialist services contract award demonstrates Stork’s expanding footprint into new onshore markets as well as the company’s proven capabilities to deliver value-added solutions to clients, stated the company.Over the next two years, Stork will provide independent third-party inspection, surveillance and quality assurance services to assist Babcock International Group in complying with regulatory and legal requirements for the quality standards of the company’s products and services.
Stork’s office in Aberdeen will lead the work, in addition to assistance from its global network of industry experts. The project began in January 2021.
Can you present your research or a topic as an elevator pitch in just 3 minutes?Well, these Young ICorr members certainly can.
To celebrate Corrosion Awareness Day 2021, in collaboration with the European Federation of Corrosion and World Corrosion Organisation, four PhD students presented their research. The audience were treated to an informative presentation on hybrid FeCO3-poly(allylamine hydrochloride) deposition on carbon steel to improve corrosion resistance and characterising the associated mechanical properties and wettability by, Dlshad Shaikhah of Leeds University. Mohamed Alhebsi provided an in-depth analysis of pitting corrosion and SCC behaviour of CRAs in sweet and sour environments, to support industry applications. New techniques for understanding the erosion-corrosion phenomena revealing how time-dependent surface-hardening processes affect material loss rates during mechanical-electrochemical coupled corrosion, were presented by Aigerim Omirkhan from Imperial College.
Competition was fierce and the standard of presentation was excellent. However, there had to be a winner, and Qingyan Liu from Leeds University’s whistle stop presentation on corrosion resistance of alloys to molten nitrate salt environments to support their use in solar power plants was the winner! Qingyan described how thermal cycling mitigates the corrosion rate and reduces the spallation behaviour of stainless steels compared with isothermal samples. Further analysis showed the multilayer corrosion products consisting of on the outside, sodium ferrite, and on the inside, iron chromium oxides. It was fantastic to find out about everyone’s research and the standard of presentation was very high. Many thanks to the judges, Bill Hedges, David Mobbs and Trevor Osborne.
An epoxy-amine coating exhibited high impedance after 30 days of NaCl immersion. Even artificially damaged epoxy-amine coatings displayed satisfactory performances.
In the present work, scientists used a tetrafunctional epoxy-amine resin as a coating for mild steel and used electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to investigate its protection performance in a 3.5 wt % NaCl solution. The results indicate that the coating was able to resist corrosion and maintain a very high impedance modulus for more than 30 days of continuous exposure to the NaCl solution.
Different resistance behaviours, as indicated by EIS, were observed for the coatings with artificially introduced damage. The coating also showed high thermal resistance and good adhesion to mild steel surfaces.
The study was published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 151, February 2021.
The anticorrosive behaviour of an epoxy coating modified with hydrophobic nano-silica on phosphated carbon steel was the subject of a new study.
According to the researchers, the anticorrosive performance of an epoxy coating is significantly improved when hydrophobic nano-silica is added to an epoxy matrix, adding hydrophobic nano-silica can effectively increase the diffusion path of water-soluble corrosive media through the coating film. The modified epoxy coatings presented good hydrophobicity, good thermal stability at 250 °C with only about 3 % weight loss.
The study was published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 151, February 2021.
A recent report describes the importance of varying the ratio of conventional flame-retardant additives and the scale of testing on the thermal and flammability/fire performance, of acrylic-based coatings.
Ammonium polyphosphate (APP) acid source, pentaerythritol (PER) carbonising agent, and expandable graphite (EG) blowing agent were used in intumescent coatings at various ratios. 1:1:3 or 1:3:1 or 3:1:1. Despite the different roles of APP, PER, and EG, in all the compositions, the physical mechanism of exfoliation of graphite played an important role in offering the fire protection.
With higher loadings of EG, the fire-resistance time was higher. However, there were clear differences in the protection extent when tested in a furnace under one-dimensional heat transfer conditions (bench-scale) as opposed to three-dimensional large-scale testing. Parameters that are not intrinsic to the coating system like char cohesion, cracking, delamination from the substrate, rapid and non-directional expansion, and even higher heat fluxes experienced by the edges of the I-steel section however all affect the fire performance.
This study was published in Progress in Organic Coatings Volume 150, January 2021.
According to a press release from CEPE, the European paint, printing inks and artists’ colours industry is under increased pressure, for several reasons.
“After a year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry faces serious challenges again in 2021 due to the rise in raw material prices”, said André Vieira de Castro, Chairman of CEPE. There are several reasons for the increase, namely increasing demand for raw materials due to the anticipated economic recovery, a shortage of raw materials available due to bad weather conditions and the closing of several plants causing suppliers of raw materials to invoke force majeure. In addition, transportation costs are on the rise resulting from the sharp increase in oil prices. André Vieira de Castro pursued “The burden for the industry is immense, as raw material prices account for more than half of the cost. Since January last year, costs for key components like epoxy resins have risen by 60 percent in Europe. The situation is similar for solvents, where the price of acetone and n-butyl acetate alone rose by 123% and 91% respectively.”
The current situation stems from Europe and Asia and especially the unexpected rapid recovery in China which is fuelling demand for essential raw materials. Next to epoxy resins, the list of highly demanded petrochemical raw materials includes polyester resins, polypropylene glycols, acrylic acids, acrylic resin, UV resins, polyurethane resins, and solvents. In parallel to petrochemical raw materials, global pigment raw material costs (including titanium dioxide, red and yellow iron oxide) have also seen sharp increases.
The situation is exacerbated by capacity issues. Disruptions at producers in Asia and Europe – either due to factory closures or plant accidents – have significantly tightened supply. Another cost factor are scarce transportation resources. The COVID-19 pandemic led to erratic demands for international trade which affected the shipping container movements. The current global shortage of containers in the right places has led to a sharp increase in transportation costs: prices of containers between China and Europe have risen more than 400% since Q4 2020.
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