ECS supplied more than 1000 ft of composite ductwork and fittings incorporating AOC’s Vipel® K022 vinyl ester resin.ECS Environmental Solutions, a supplier of odour control equipment and accessories based in Belton, Texas, and resin supplier AOC, Tennessee, worked together to create part of the city of Austin’s complex wastewater infrastructure project. The new 3.9-mile wastewater tunnel increases capacity for the downtown district. An important part of the project is an odour control system.
ECS provided the odour control equipment and relied on AOC’s Vipel® resin for more than 1000 ft of glass fibre reinforced plastic ductwork and additional accessories. The ductwork ranges in size from 12 inches to 72 inches in diameter. Approximately half of the ductwork is buried below ground and had to be able to withstand thousands of pounds of high-density traffic driving over the site.
Additional elements of the project include field joint kits, flexible connectors, control and back-draft dampers, bolt gaskets and two fiberglass exhaust fans rated at 40,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM).
Corrosion-resistant resin
The K022 resin was the best choice for this project. Some of the gases in the air stream are corrosive – hydrogen sulphide and ammonia. There’s also sulphuric acid. Pipes built with this resin are very resistant to what goes in them: they will not easily corrode.
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| Jeff Jones, president, ECS |
ECS manufactured all of the fibreglass ductwork using a computerised filament winder. The fibre was impregnated with AOC’s Vipel K022 corrosion-resistant vinyl ester resin, which is ideal for filament winding.
To help ease installation, ECS prefabricated and sub-assembled the duct system at its facility, then shipped it to Austin about an hour away. A crew of five from ECS travelled to the construction site and handled all the field work. That’s when AOC’s service became invaluable, says Jones.
“We work in a controlled environment in the shop, but in the field you are open to the elements,” says Jones.
“Some of the days we were in Austin were cold and others were really hot. We had to adjust promotion levels and add inhibitors to work with the resin long enough to do a quality job under tough conditions.”
AOC’s Scott Lane, product leader, offered technical assistance that helped ECS re-formulate the resin. Eric Stuck, AOC sales representative, also assisted ECS in meeting the demands of this material-intensive project.
“With the long runs and thick pipes, we went through material much faster than normal, and AOC was very good at meeting this fluctuation in demand,” says Jones.
“If we ran out of resin on this job, it would have put the project to a halt. AOC got materials here when we needed them.”