Many cubic metres of water shoot through the pipelines, turbines and filters of a hydroelectric power plant every second. And even though these components are very durable and specially designed for constant water contact, corrosion damages are inevitable over time. One of our Turkish customers was also faced with this problem. During maintenance works on the hydropower plant, he noticed significant leakages in one of his filter tanks. A new corrosion protection by coating with our products could prevent a cost-intensive replacement and made sure that today, the filter looks as good as new!
The power of water
In a hydroelectric power plant, the water’s kinetic energy is transformed into electrical energy by means of a turbine. The turbine is connected to a generator, which generates electricity from the mechanical energy for many households.
The world’s largest hydroelectric power plant – the Three Gorges Dam – is located in China. The generator has an impressive output of 22,500 megawatts! In comparison: the generator of the largest hydropower plant in Germany has an output of 1,060 megawatts.
Condition of the filter tank
Our customer’s filter tank showed severe signs of wear and thus leakages. Usually, the filters of the hydropower plant protect the turbines and generators from potentially harmful particles in the untreated water. In order for this one to keep serving its purpose, a fast and economical solution was needed. A new corrosion protection by coating with our products should prevent the expensive replacement with a new filter. To do so, two of our Plastic Metal types were used, our WEICON A and our WEICON Ceramic BL.
New corrosion protection by coating – step by step
Cleaning
First, all coarse rust and dirt needed to be removed mechanically to reveal cavities and damages. Next, the entire filter tank was cleaned with our WEICON Cleaner Spray S. The spray is perfect for the cleaning and degreasing before priming and painting, or before using other WEICON products.
Repairing the leakages and cavities
With the next step, the application of the pasty and steel-filled WEICON A, leaks and cavities soon were a thing of the past. The epoxy resin system with DNV-GL-certification can be used to repair corrosion damages and pitting on tanks, for repairing pipes and castings, and for sealing cracks in housings and machine components. So it was the perfect product for this application!
Additional wear protection
The last step was to provide full-surface corrosion protection by applying a coating: with our WEICON Ceramic BL! This epoxy resin system contains silicon carbide and zirconium silicate, and thus provides high abrasion resistance and high resistance to substances.
Thanks to the successful repair, the filter tank is now ready to ‘go with the flow’ (no pun intended) for many years to come!
More Plastic Metal in use
Speaking of providing corrosion protection by coating: our Plastic Metal products are also suitable for various other repair works in industrial applications. For example, we also used them to coat an oil pipeline with a length of 100 kilometres. You can read all about it in this blog post.
Written by Annabelle Kreft
