Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
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Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Composite Materials in Infrastructure
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Traditional infrastructure materials like concrete and steel were once the construction materials of choice. But their disadvantages include weight, high life-cycle costs, and long build times. Using fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites can help solve all of those problems.
In this episode, Eric Ball and Darren Simmie from our Orenco Composites division explain how FRP composites are an ideal material for infrastructure projects. They describe the FRP manufacturing process and how composite materials have solved infrastructure problems for many businesses and communities.
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00:08
Angela: Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Angela Bounds, and I'm joined by my co-host, Shawn Rapp. In each episode, we'll tackle a relevant topic with facts and expert opinions and make things clear.
00:28
Hello and thanks for joining us again. Today we're gonna be talking about everything composites. Well, maybe not everything, but...
Shawn: Quite a bit.
Angela: Quite a bit. We're gonna be talking a lot about composites. Joining Shawn and I today are Eric Ball and Darren Simmie. So they're both leading our efforts in the composites world from buildings to tanks to OEM products. So,
00:57
Why don't we dive in? Thanks for being here, guys.
Eric: Thank you.
Darren: You bet.
Angela: So let's tackle the first question. If you've seen our composite products anywhere, you'll see that most of the time the letters FRP are associated with composite products. So can you guys tell us what is FRP?
Eric: Sure. So the letters FRP stand for fiber reinforced polymer
01:26
which is a very generic term. The fiber can be many different things. For us, it's mostly fiberglass, but like in the aerospace world, it's usually carbon fiber and it could be any number of things that auto industry uses natural fibers like flax. And then the resins can be any number of things. It can be epoxies and BMI and all kinds of fancy stuff that aerospace uses. But we… in the wastewater and infrastructure world here at Orenco, we use
01:55
polyester resins and vinyl ester resins and, and I'll talk a little bit later about some more unique resins that we're using but basically FRP means a fiber reinforced resin of some type.
Angela: So what part do composites play in the infrastructure world? Where do we see them? Where could people see some of our buildings, etc?
Eric: Yeah so…
02:24
FRP and the infrastructure world is really a very quickly growing field. know, traditionally in infrastructure, we think about steel and concrete probably mostly, but you know, maybe aluminum and wood too. And it's been around for decades. So, but where you will see FRP have been used for a long time are like wet wells, you know, underground things, marine industry
02:51
on piers where you've got a lot of corrosion issues with traditional materials. But for Orenco, we've developed a number of products for composite infrastructure world. So tanks, buildings, covers, bridges, wet wells, other things that are used in infrastructure like we don't produce, but like rebar is being used instead of steel for a lot of concrete structures, especially in marine environments where steel corrodes a lot. So,
03:18
You know, one of the things in order to get better acceptance of FRP in the infrastructure world, there needs to be more standards being developed. And there are a number of associations working on those things. they just developed a new standard for FRP rebar in bridges, for example.
Angela: So there aren't a lot of regulations around composite products right now?
Eric: I don't know if it's regulations, but standards would be, yeah. And they're being worked on more and more.
03:47
There’s new standards for protrusions for light poles and for poles for the electrical industry.
Darren: And generally as the products are produced, then the standards tend to catch up. Right. We're used to seeing. And specific products that Orenco composites manufacturers, where we see those in infrastructure is, for example, in the water and wastewater infrastructure world, we'll see our DuraFiber buildings used for
04:17
water treatment. So it may be a chemical feed building that's in the water distribution line to be able to, for a water system, or it could be in like for wastewater, it'd be a lift station control building where it's housing all the controls for the conveyance of the wastewater in a community. Other industries we're seeing, communications industries, we see our buildings being used for two-way radio backup for the 911 systems. We've done that. So that's a neat application.
04:47
Tanks in the power industry, we'll talk a little bit more about later. Composite covers for some food industry or industrial applications. So wide variety. Composite bridges in parks and those types of applications.
Angela: So why don't you tell us a little bit about the benefits that we're seeing using composites over the traditional materials that you mentioned like wood, concrete, metal.
05:17
Eric: So, you know, it really varies a lot depending on the application. So being corrosion resistant is one of the biggest things, especially in the water and wastewater field. You know, steel will corrode, aluminum will corrode to some degree, wood can rot. So any place where it's wet or salt water, FRP is a great application. Just think about FRP boats. That's one of the big reasons because they don't corrode.
05:48
They're FRPs also very light. So, You know, compared to steel, like some of our, our, our walkways, for example, we can build a walkway that weighs eight or nine pounds of square foot. And if you were to pour concrete, it would be 150. So now you've got a walkway that's going to be just as durable and long lasting as concrete or longer without the corrosion issues and whatever substructure is holding that walkway up only has to hold up
06:16
you know, less than 10 pounds of square foot. Then there's also because these things are molded in one lot of times in one very large piece, there's reduction in fasteners or no fasteners and no joints. So for our tank applications, we can mold large tanks with no joints. There's no seams to leak. So those are those are big benefits. Other things which maybe we would I don't know if we'll talk about later, but FRP has a lot lower
06:45
life cycle cost and also far lower greenhouse gas emissions. So when we talk about decarbonization on earth, FRP has a really big benefit over traditional materials, especially concrete and steel.
Angela: So for the listeners benefit, you mentioned that we can mold building our tank without seams. What is the largest building or tank that you can make?
07:14
Darren: Largest single piece structure is 12 foot wide, 11 foot high and 50 feet long. And then if we do go to need something larger for buildings, we can do two piece buildings or even multi-piece buildings. And then if we need to do larger tanks, we also have ways to be able to do a multi-piece structure. But the single piece structures are basically as large as you can reasonably ship.
Angela: What size do you see on average or does it vary?
Darren: Yeah, there is a wide variety. So a lot of
07:44
what we would consider smaller buildings in that eight by eight range, but then also it jumps up and you see a lot of buildings in that 12 by 30, 12 by 40 range and a lot of tanks that are the full size tank that we make. That way they can maximize whatever process they're using.
Shawn: Is there any kind of a time benefit to using FRP over traditional products as well? does it take less time to manufacture something like that versus a concrete building or?
Eric: Yeah, so that's a great question.
08:14
Our buildings, we mold a one piece in a factory and then it can be placed on site just by bolting it down to a concrete slab typically. So the alternative is often concrete tilt up or concrete block, which takes multiple trades and can take weeks to install. So there is a huge benefit for the out on the field in terms of installation. That field time can be much, much, much, much lower, less intrusive. So,
08:43
Darren's got applications where that made all the difference in the world going FRP versus a block building, for example. Then you have inherent insulation. So one thing we didn't talk about was our process. Most of the products we mold, we use a vacuum infusion process. So pretty much every wind blade manufacturer in the world uses vacuum infusion and most
09:08
you know, big yachts or use vacuum infusion. So you have a big open mold, usually female mold, and you lay down all your glass reinforcement and core materials and whatever you're going to embed in this, in this part. And then you put a vacuum bagging film over it temporarily. And then you use atmospheric pressure to, well, you pull full vacuum and then you introduce a line into that, into under that bag and it impregnates all of the glass and everything underneath that bag.
09:38
So not only that allows us to do super large structures without using expensive molds, and we can change sizes and stuff very quickly.
Shawn: Awesome.
Angela: So why don't you guys tell us about some of the projects that you've worked on?
Darren: OK, yeah, this is always the fun part. We really enjoy when we get larger and complex projects, but we also are very proficient at the smaller projects.
10:08
that we always like having the projects where there's a lot of dialogue along the way where you get to be able to solve problems or provide solutions, especially to the engineering community that they didn't realize existed. So a couple of really fun projects. So there's a project in Colony, Texas, where we provided two 14-foot wide buildings that were nine feet high and 20 feet long. And these actually were for a water treatment system.
10:33
And they were with actually installed within two miles of each other. So it a very large residential development. And we worked with a very large firm and it was one of those, again, not, it's like every step of the way they're like, oh, you can actually provide that. And so we were able to provide a fully outfitted building with electrical, cooling, ventilation, and all they had to do is install their chemical feed skids into the building.
10:58
And we were able to deliver those and we delivered them in a really fairly tight timeframe, about 12 weeks from science and metals, both buildings. And then it took about six hours each building to actually unload them and then install them onto the concrete pad for our buildings are typically installed onto a concrete pad anchored down with a, with a traditional wedge anchor. So that, that was a good project. then sometimes we'll get into these projects where, you know, as anything in construction scopes change, right? We had this
11:28
project here locally in Oregon, where it was a city and a community water system that combined and they are having to install new turbine well pumps. So very large horsepower pumps and they needed something to house the pumps. Well, the pumps overthrew the project as we were working with the engineer and the design, actually kept getting slightly larger. So the building went for something that would fit into our molds, typically. then it increased significantly in height and width.
11:57
they had some other tight constraints where they couldn't go larger. So the building ended up being 13 feet wide, 13 and a half feet tall and 24 feet long. And so it ended up, that was one of those situations where we were able to construct it in panels and then assemble it here at our factory, still ship it complete. And again, saving that time, that construction time, the multiple trades being on the site and having a relatively quick installation.
12:26
So those are a couple of building projects. Eric had mentioned tanks as well. So we had a large scale tank project over a three year period where we were able to manufacture over a hundred tanks that were 10 feet wide, 11 feet high and 32 feet long. And they use these tanks in part of, a coal fired power plant, part of the industrial waste stream process. it.
12:51
What's cool is you take a project like that where it's really custom, right? But then next thing you know, you're making a hundred of this really custom item over a three year period. you know, it was a key part of infrastructure for the power plants to be able to clean their waste stream up. And it was, you know, significant because that company, they needed something rectangular in shape to maximize their treatment process as opposed to something round, which is traditionally used in industrial treatment.
13:20
That's another neat project. I think we've also, Eric, you know, and I highlighted that cover project where we had some...
Eric: Yeah. So there are a lot of open, big, huge open round tanks in wastewater and the wastewater business around the United States, anywhere from, you know, something small like 10, 15 foot in diameter up to things that are 150 foot diameter and bigger. And we've, we've, we've recently produced a cover.
13:49
for a 105 foot diameter, pre-stressed concrete tank in Delaware on a chicken processing plant. they had major odor issues. There's a, there's a playground like less than 50 feet from the tank and that tank smelled bad. So we proposed a cover, an FRP cover system. It was so large though, we needed to, they needed to provide a steel trusses to hold the panels up, which we helped,
14:18
we helped them design, but it was a really good project. They wanted a flat cover. didn't want to, you can get very large domed covers, but then that sticks up in the air another 10 or 15 or 20 feet. So it was a good application. these covers for a lot of the wastewater tanks, they want to preserve heat, especially for nutrient reduction. so our panel, because they're vacuum infused panels have a core
14:48
foam material provides integral insulation, is, I'd have to say is a big benefit for a lot of these structures, whether it's a tank or a building or a cover, that integral insulation is a pretty key advantage just inherent in our production of our products. So anyway, so we've got other covers that we're going to be producing. We've got some coming up that are 140 foot in diameter, same kind of concept.
15:16
you know, super large steel trusses holding up our panels. So it goes to get it. What's commonly done for FRP panels in the industry is they use pultrusions and a bazillion fasteners. So we've got we've got these really large molded panels, sometimes 10, 12 feet wide by up to 50 or 60 feet long. And you'd have one of those panels instead of maybe, I don't know, 50 or 100 individual parts and fasteners. So…
Shawn: That's cool.
15:45
Angela: And you can, for all of you listening out there, you can go to orenkocomposites.com or you can just go to orenco.com and find your way to the composite section. And you can get on there and see the large variety of project types that we've worked on or the examples of projects. As Darren and Eric have talked about, it's a very custom
16:15
segment of our business. And so if you don't find exactly what you're looking for on the website, I would just suggest giving a call because it's entirely possible that we could help.
Eric: Yep. We definitely enjoy working on new cool things and trying to solve problems.
Angela: Yes. All right. So speaking of new things, are you working on any new materials, using new materials or any new applications that you'd like to highlight?
16:45
Eric: Sure, so we are working with a couple of new resins. We are working with an infusible grade of DCPD resin, which offers really super tough, good toughness and really good environmental resistance, even better than some of the high-end polyester resins like vinyl ester. So it has good temperature resistance, really good hydrolytic stability. In other words, it resists water a lot.
17:15
We're doing a bunch of projects using that resin.
17:19
And we also, there's another resin that we're investigating and been doing a bunch of testing with that's kind of a urethane based material that has really good fire resistance. So we have applications for buildings primarily where you need, it could be in the, oh, what's the…
Darren: like data centers or some power distribution applications that require some fire ratings.
Eric: we ran a test at Southwest research in Texas. We passed what's called an E… E… what's the number Darren?
17:49
91 or…
Darren: 119
Eric: 119. Thank you. We 119 we passed a one-hour test which is pretty significant for an FRP building. And then some of the other applications we're working on some crane mat prototypes for a very, very large company that would be in the energy industry
18:10
What else, Darren?
Darren: OEM opportunities, specialty companies that already have some ideas and they want us to just do the manufacturing for them as well.
Shawn: That's great.
Darren: Some things for different, get out of that infrastructure space even in some places.
Eric: I should mention the Army Corps of Engineers, we produce some really thick, heavy, high tolerance FRP blocks for gates, lock gates.
Angela: Right.
Shawn: Oh wow!
18:40
Eric: In fact, I was just up there when they installed all that on the Chittenden Lock Gates in Seattle between Lake Washington and the Puget Sound. Really cool application to replace steel that would corrode. And it looks like there's more project coming up. We'll be working on more blocks. But lots of potential applications for that.
19:04
DCPD really toughened resin in the Army Corps industry because there's a lot of things on the waterways, rivers, and things where they have impacts from various things.
Darren: And they're looking at FRP for lifetime costs, correct?
Eric: Yeah, they want things to last 100 years and you're in that tough marine environment and so they want toughness and corrosion resistance and low maintenance and so they're really starting to, they're getting pretty excited about FRP.
Shawn: That's great.
Angela: Very cool.
19:34
Well, is there anything else that you feel like the listeners should know?
Eric: FRP is really a material that's growing in infrastructure for sure. And it's been a long road to get it approved because the civil engineering community is very conservative and there's a lot of existing standards like how you build a bridge. know, all these standards exist, ASTM standards and AASHTO standards, the highway division and all these things. And so it takes time to
20:04
to get civil engineers to accept these things. But it's growing. The other issue with that is that you can produce FRP components so many different ways. It's difficult to, with concrete, you pour concrete and it is what it is, monolithic material. But FRP, can use so many different materials and use fabrics in so many different ways. But it's growing and I think we're gonna
20:34
be, we hope to be part of that success and industry.
Shawn: That's great.
Darren: Yeah. I would say that if, you know, a lot of times the engineering community may be familiar with smaller structures, so smaller buildings or smaller tanks and not understand that, yes, we can go much larger. So that's what I would ask for consideration. And if people listening as, as give us a call and ask, I'm considering this, is this feasible in FRP. And we'll, we'll, we'll tell you if it's something that's not feasible, we'll tell you if it is, we'll
21:03
will definitely help you along the way.
Angela: Yeah, the number of times that I know you guys have heard, oh, I didn't realize you could do that.
Shawn: Mm hmm.
Darren: Yes.
Angela: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us today and with the listeners. We really appreciate your time and your efforts.
Eric: Thanks for having us on.
Darren: Thank you.
Angela: Absolutely.
We want to thank you again for joining us today. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts so you're notified when new episodes are posted. Also, you can leave your comments or suggestions through the contact link on our website, www.orenco.com. Until next time, have a great day!
