Introduction
Acquired by Stanmore Resources in 2015, Isaac Plains Coal Mine began operation in January 2016. Over is 16-year life span it is expected to produce and process over 35 million tonnes of ROM coal. Stanmore holds regular shutdowns to complete maintenance work on the facility. Approximately every 6 months the facility is shut down for a 2-week period to complete this work.
During the most recent shut down period IMATECH were contracted to refurbish the internal coatings on some of the sumps. They in turn contract ACR Technologies to remove the existing Polyurea coating from these sumps with the use of our induction disbonding technology.
Over the 10-day period we were on site, we managed to completely remove the internal coating from 7 sumps. Over 300m2 of Polyurea were removed and recoated within the time period.
Project Work
The coating removal process was divided into 2 sections.
1. Firstly, we used the RPR induction unit to heat up the substrate to approximately 150 degrees. This disbonded the Polyurea from the steel and allowed us to peel it off in large sections.
By using this method first, we drastically increased the rate of removal of this coating. There was no encapsulation or abrasive needed at this stage. We were able to fully remove the coating before moving onto stage 2.
2. IMATECH then encapsulated the sumps and proceeded to abrasive blast the substrate with 30/60 garnet to the SA 2.5 standard, providing a clean surface before reapplication occurred.
Conclusions
This project was a complete success. Had IMATECH used traditional coating removal methods, it would have unlikely they could have achieved completion of all 7 sumps. The Polyurea coating was over 2000 microns thick and would have simply taken too long to blast off. Not to mention the amount of garnet that would have been needed to take on the task and the time spend cleaning up after wards.
Using the RPR induction heating units we were able to increase the productivity and provide our client with above expectation results all the while saving them time and money on the project. A great result all over.
