Industrial construction jobs require high-quality materials to produce long-lasting results. One of the best products available is polyurea liner, also known as polyurea coating. This material provides extra protection and is highly resistant to chemicals, which makes it perfect for wastewater lining. It’s ideal for concrete protection but can also protect masonry and metals. Compared to other common substances like epoxy, polyurea is the superior choice.
How Long Does Polyurea Coating Last?
Polyurea Liner Outperforms Other Coatings
A properly applied polyurea lining can last for decades. This is one of the reasons why polyurea has become the standard for a wide array of construction applications. Barring extreme physical damage from a harsh impact, polyurea lining can easily last 30 or 40 years. As an added bonus, producing polyurea products doesn’t negatively impact the environment. Those aren’t the only benefits of using polyurea products either.
Because polyurea provides both nonskid coating and abrasion resistance, it’s excellent for heavily trafficked surfaces. You might even have it in your truck bed or RV! However, its chemical resistance is why it’s such a useful product for wastewater applications. Wastewater pipes deal with some of the harshest conditions possible. A polyurea treatment keeps the structure safe from corrosion and erosion.
Compare Polyurea To Epoxy
Many epoxy-based products promise long-lasting protection against corrosion in wastewater applications. Nevertheless, many of these epoxy coatings fail to handle the harsh environments that wastewater creates. Epoxy product manufacturers boast that they can resist wastewater, which is true. However, epoxies are susceptible to degradation by hydrogen sulfide gas. Bacteria release this gas in wastewater over time. A study of a wastewater plant in Europe revealed damage to epoxy-treated pipes after just two years!
Contrast those results with those of studies that focus on polyurea-treated concrete. The coating actually makes the structure stronger, allowing it to resist stress better. This is very useful for ongoing construction projects where lots of vibration occurs. A properly applied epoxy coating could be damaged while construction continues. Polyurea products, on the other hand, show remarkable resistance and make the materials they are applied to even better.
New Polyurea Products
Polyurea coating technology continues to advance. There are new formulations in development that use epoxy as a base but add polyurea microcapsules to make the final product superior. What makes these new formulations so special is that by adding polyurea to the mix, the final product is able to heal itself after being damaged. A study applied regular epoxy coatings and a polyurea-enhanced coating to identical surfaces and then put them through various stress tests.
The results of the experiment were remarkable. The coatings that included polyurea improved the durability of the surfaces they were applied, confirming the studies previously mentioned. However, when even more polyurea was added (up to 5% of the total weight), the final product could self-heal up to 61% of the damage done in the stress tests. These results help explain why polyurea treatments last longer than epoxy-based coatings.
