Trelleborg’s New Epoxies Enhance Site Performance on Dyno-Rod Operations in the United Kingdom

U.K. drainage specialist contractor Dyno-Rod is the first to test the benefits and improved on-site performance of Trelleborg’s latest epoxy resin range for CIPP installations.

Machmade Ltd, a Dyno-Rod franchise holder in the Liverpool region of the United Kingdom, currently owns a Trelleborg Type 1 drum with a hotbox. The drum is regularly utilized for the installation of CIPP linings into host pipelines from DN40 up to DN225 (at a liner wall thickness of 3.0 mm) to around a length of 30 m.

Recently, Machmade became the first contractor in the United Kingdom to use one of the latest Trelleborg hot cure (HC) epoxy resins design for CIPP installations, that being the EPROPOX HC120 resin.
This exciting advance in the range of new Trelleborg products has been used on a variety of projects in the Liverpool area because according to Machmade the new resins offer many advantages over those previously available to the market.

New Range

Trelleborg’s latest range in Epoxy Resins comprises 10 new products in total (four hot curing systems without fillers, three with fillers and three fast and ambient curing systems). The customer-driven designs of the new resins in the range cover a wide variety of applications depending on the final product’s operational requirements, required pot life and cure times (which in turn depend on the curing systems used – hot water or steam). The resin designs have been created to be as flexible as possible so that individual applications can be made specifically according to site demands from within the one range.

For example at one end of the range the EPROPOX HC60 has a pot life of just 60 minutes (at 25 C) with cure times of 60 minutes with hot water or 30  minutes with steam to give a flexural modulus of 2,900 N/mm2. While at the other end of the range the EPROPOX HC2640 resin offers a pot life of up to 44 hours (at 25 C) with a five-hour hot water cure or three-hour steam cure for a flexural modulus of 3,600 N/mm2.
One highlight is the EPROPOX HC2640 resin with correct low-temperature storage and process control this already long pot life can be further extended, even to as much as several weeks. This is why for example this resin system is best for liner applications requiring factory or off-site pre-impregnation before they are transported to site and inserted.

Advantages

The design work that went into the new resins was based on customer feedback which indicated increasing demand from both end-user client and their contractors to minimize site occupation time and footprint to both reduce public disruption and environmental impact.

The design viscosity of the new resin range allows for significantly faster impregnation of the liner material. In the case of the operation using the EPROPOX HC120 resin in Liverpool, with the resin being the color blue, this allowed site operators to easily follow and monitor the progress of the impregnation process. During the post-lining CCTV survey, the blue finish also gave a clear image, as well as a good impression to the end client regarding the finished product.

The resins are also available in pre-batched cans to ensure that mixing is made even simpler and that no wastage occurs.

On the Liverpool projects, the pot life of the resin-impregnated liners allowed for a working of around three hours at ambient temperatures of 10 C, and as much as two hours at 20 C. This ensured ample time to insert and inflate or invert the liner into place before any curing could occur.

In such circumstances, using the hot box option with a heat cure using hot water at 60 C, cure time can be as short as just 1½ hours, so optimizing site occupation time to the maximum while providing the required final product to the highest possible quality.

When using steam cure with the EPROPOX HC120 resin, at a temperature of at least 80 C held over only three to four hours, it has been shown in tests that the final liner can achieve a high Flexural Modulus of 3,200 MPa, making the final product very strong and offering longer life-expectancy. In terms of industry standards, the requirements of the U.K. water industry is a minimum Flexural Modulus of 2,200 MPa, so in these terms the cured EPROPOX HC120 resin offers a product of 30 percent higher strength than the industry minimum.

The new resin range has been tested by the Ingenieurbüro Siebert + Knipschild  testing laboratory, which is accredited under DIN EN/ISO 17025 and an accredited inspection and certification body of the German Institute for Construction Engineering (DIBt – Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik).

Commenting on the new resin product range Trelleborg Pipe Seals sales director Ian Ramsay said: “The new resins have been designed to benefit contractors in many ways with quick impregnation times and cure times as well as high strength of the finished product. The main factors that were taken into account during the design process and driving the new design forward was the increasing demand from contractors and end-user clients for project times to be speeded up on site whilst reducing the overall risk and operations cost. This we feel has now been successfully achieved.”

This article was provided by Trelleborg Pipe Seals Duisburg, GmbH