Shannon: 0:43
Hello, welcome to Tank Talk. This is Shannon Oelkers, and today we are interviewing two very special guests from Seaman Corporation. Seaman Corporation is the parent company of the XR5 Geo-Membrane Liner, which should be familiar to most of you. in fuels, especially in Alaska. The XR5 Geo-Membrane Liner is used at many different facilities as part of the secondary containment system. Because secondary containment is so important to bulk fuel farms especially, I wanted to reach out to Seaman and interview them and get helpful tips and tricks on how to extend the life of your liner. what causes the most damage? While you're listening to this interview with Brad Hochberger and Craig Hoffman, I want you to pay special attention to what creates a longer life. Some of these membranes have been in service for over 40 years. Please join me in this interview with Brad Hochberger at Tandred Salesman with Seaman Corporation and Craig Hoffman, their XR5 application engineer. I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did. I know I learned quite a lot. Good morning, this is Shannon, and I'm joined today by Brad Hochberger and Craig Hoffman from Seaman's and they are going to let us in on all of the inside knowledge for liner material. We have used their products XR5 and XR5 ULT in many, many secondary containment areas. I thought they would be really interesting people to interview so that we could learn more about these line systems that we have all over rural Alaska. Brad and Craig, I was curious how did you get interested in the containment liner industry? What kind of career path led you here?
Brad Hochberger: 2:27
It was kind of an interesting career path because it really started for me almost 30 years ago when I was in another industry. I learned about really what we defined then as the industrial fabrics industry, which covers a broad range of products that are used in multiple markets, from architectural fabrics to truck tarps to fabrics for pool covers, and liner products Geo-membranes are part of that. Roofing products are another part of that. As my responsibilities built, geo-membranes really became an integral part of what I do. I think ultimately, the idea that we can protect the environment with flexible fabrics is tremendous to keep our environment as pristine as possible. That really spurred the interest As you dig deeper into those markets. there are so many applications globally for primary and secondary containment of hydrocarbons A pretty good list of chemicals as well. I think that's really what drove my interest.
Shannon: 3:47
And Craig. What about you?
Craig Hoffman: 3:50
My background is in polymers. I have a bachelor's degree in general chemistry with a polymer option and a master's degree in polymer sciences and engineering. So I've been in the polymer side of things for the past eight years And then I've jumped around a couple of times. I've done color, and I've done formulation, and then they were looking for an applications engineer I decided to try my hand at that since I know the background of the material and the coating part of it. The textiles part is completely new to me, but I'm picking it up a little bit at a time.
Shannon: 4:30
So I would love to ask, because I'm not actually sure, what is a geo-membrane? What defines a product as a geo-membrane? I'm curious about that.
Brad Hochberger: 4:43
I think, ultimately, the definition is a membrane that protects our geological environment.
Shannon: 4:48
Okay, and then a typical liner material. Just so we're set the stage. If somebody's new to this industry, what is a typical liner material? How is it constructed, and how does it protect the environment?
Brad Hochberger: 5:01
Oh, that's a great question.
Craig Hoffman: 5:02
You can have multiple ways to talk about how a geo-membrane is constructed. You have unreinforced materials, which are just strictly one polymer or a formulation of a polymer. And then you have reinforced materials, which is what our specialty is in, where you have a fabric and then it is coated with a polymeric material, and that's really where it gets its chemical resistance, that part of it but the physical properties come from the fabric itself. So there are a couple of different ways you could design a geo-membrane.
Shannon: 5:34
Let's talk about XR5 because we see that almost everywhere in Alaska It's a very common selection for secondary containment. What does XR5 look like? The back of it is definitely a fabric.
Brad Hochberger: 5:48
Well, we start off with a knitted polyester fiber through our unique coating process, we go through an adhesive coat, a black coat, and a face coat. So when you see the finished product, there's been some work that you don't see. When you're looking at the material, which is really, you can see the kind of outline of the fiber on the backside.
Shannon: 6:11
Yeah.
Brad Hochberger: 6:12
But one of the keys is that primer slash adhesive coat which allows us to get a chemical bond of the face coat and the back coat to the fiber. Without that, you would probably have delamination issues. So we don't ever want a product to delaminate.
Shannon: 6:29
No, it's bad when it does.
Brad Hochberger: 6:31
That's not good. You're right; that's not good. So that's essentially how we sandwich the materials together. It's a multiple-step process. We have our manufacturing plans very vertically integrated, where we knit and leave our own gray goods, which is the base fabric, and we do all the coatings in-house.
Shannon: 6:50
So you have control of the entire quality assurance process for all portions of the XR5?
Brad Hochberger: 6:55
Starting with the fiber through the coating technology, inspection Exactly.
Shannon: 7:01
Okay.
Craig Hoffman: 7:01
Another point that should really be highlighted is the adhesive part of it. You know that allows us to be the coated fabric claim to be, rather than just a scrim, reinforced geomembrane, and I feel like that's something that really differentiates the XR5 from other products.
Shannon: 7:19
Well, that leads to my next question because in Alaska, we have a very specific regulation for large single-walled tanks, and it requires liners to have a specific impermeability requirement which, as a sidebar, is one multiplied by 10 to the -6 centimeters per second at a maximum anticipated hydrostatic pressure. One of the reasons that we often advise people to utilize XR5 is that you do meet that requirement. But I've always wondered how do you determine that. Do you have a leak-onator 3000 machine somewhere that says this is what, this is what that number is?
Craig Hoffman: 7:52
I'm just curious Leak-onator 3000. If you're a Phineas and Ferb fan, that's right, I got that reference. The one times 10 to the negative six centimeters permeation rate. That's used for soil, and it's really backed by the head pressure of the liquid If you get your hands on it or end up looking at a technical guide. For, like the XR material, our permeation is a lot less, and that's due to it being a polymer versus soil essentially, for something to permeate through a polymer, it has to vaporize and pass through the polymer itself and then recondense on the other side. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I know I mean there are orders of magnitude lower than the one times 10 to the -6.
Shannon: 8:41
So in this context, less is better. It's less, which means it's more restrictive, correct?
Craig Hoffman: 8:47
Okay, typically, when you're looking at a geomembrane, you want high chemical resistance and low permeation rate.
Shannon: 8:54
Yes, yep, and the state requires everybody now that's installing a secondary containment liner for some of the largest bulk fuel facilities to meet that impermeability requirement. And what I like about your product is you actually state it in some of your specifications, so we're able to just pull the manufacturers back and show that this material does meet that requirement. Thank you, so another part of secondary containment liners that we run into. So we are often part of the design team bringing the regulatory side or regulatory requirements to the table. But what we often see when people are selecting a liner is that the ecosystem you're putting it into is pretty important, so what data would we need to look at when we're choosing a liner for a big bulk tank farm project? Siemens and I worked together on a facility up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the weather was really, really harsh, and we actually ended up with two different ecosystems on that project, which was interesting because the ecosystem of the liner that was exposed to the environment directly we use the XR5-ULT, but underneath the tank, where the liner is not exposed to the environment, and it actually has a layer of fuel and tank over the top of it, we ended up using XR5. Could you talk a little bit about how you select liners for the environment and what sort of factors you're looking for? I know that there are heat-based considerations, but in Alaska, we don't see that as much, so maybe talk about the cold-based considerations or sunlight, or I'm curious, what should someone who's in charge of a big capital project be thinking about when they're selecting liner types?
Brad Hochberger: 10:28
In Alaska. Everyone kind of, I think, thinks that it's an extremely cold environment and it is. But it's not that way. You can get temperature changes between brutal cold winters where it's what? 50 below, 60 below to 100-degree days in the summer. That's a big swing in your temperature from one season to another. So one of the answers to your questions is you should really consider expansion and thermal expansion and contraction. If your material is expanding and contracting based on atmospheric conditions, that can really cause havoc with your installation. So one of the benefits really to either XR5 or XR5 ultra-low temperature is there's very little thermal expansion or contraction. So when the liner's installed throughout the year, it's not gonna expand or contract, it's gonna remain covering the same area, right? So that's a very critical component, especially in your environment with temperature swings. I think you need to consider what's going to be contained. Is it chemicals? Is it hydrocarbons? I think in the case of Moose Creek, it was mostly. I think it was jet fuel.
Shannon: 11:51
Yep, all jet fuel liquid freedom. So with thermal expansion, and I'm not a liner's person, but I'm guessing the more thermal expansion and contraction you have, the more like cracking of the liner surface occurs. Is that why having minimal expansion is good?
Brad Hochberger: 12:12
Ultimately as a product cycles, that way, you're exactly right. That's what leads to cracking, and if there's a crack in a liner, it has to be repaired. If it hasn't been identified, then you really have a failure mode in that secondary containment liner, and that's critical in really all applications. That's what you don't want.
Shannon: 12:35
What about exposure to UV? Because some of our tank liner systems are covered by soil, and some of that soil is like wind resistance. They're creating a weight on the liner so that it doesn't have wind lift, But I've also heard sometimes that engineers will use soil to protect the liner from UV exposure. What does UV do to the liner system?
Brad Hochberger: 12:57
Well, it depends on the liner.
Shannon: 13:00
Ha ha ha, spoken like a true engineer, thank you.
Brad Hochberger: 13:04
Ha ha ha. One of our fun facts, really. regarding our XR5 product, it's been around for over 40 years. The original installation is in. Is it Mammoth Cave? Was it Mammoth Cave? it's still in operation after 40 years of full-time exposure, not buried.
Shannon: 13:27
Oh yeah. Is that the cave in Kentucky? We put it in there so there's no UV there because it's in a cave.
Brad Hochberger: 13:33
Well, it's not necessarily in a cave, but Oh.
Craig Hoffman: 13:38
It's in the same vicinity as Mammoth Cave. It's used as a retention pond for wastewater.
Shannon: 13:43
Oh OK.
Brad Hochberger: 13:44
The XR5 is designed to have high UV resistance anywhere in the world exposed.
Shannon: 13:53
The next question I had on my list for you guys was how long does a liner typically last? And I know that varies based on many factors, but let's neck it down to, maybe Alaska. Do you have an idea of how long these liners are anticipated or engineered to last?
Brad Hochberger: 14:09
That's another one where it kind of depends right, you know if it's designed right and it's installed correctly, where you don't have wind up lift right.
Shannon: 14:17
Yeah.
Brad Hochberger: 14:19
You also have to be concerned about what type of traffic, human traffic, etc. might be on the liner. That's a concern really, with any liner in terms of people walking on it. We make an XR5 Walk Matte material designed to lay over the top of the XR5 material so people can use that to walk on the liner. Those variables can have some impact on life expectancy. You can still repair a liner if there's damage. We have repair adhesives and materials to get around that. But ultimately, if people exercise care and caution, I think we have projects in Alaska that have easily been over 20 years.
Shannon: 15:04
Just in my line of work, which involves inspecting the liners for rips and tears and recommending when to replace them when the damage has become over a certain percentage. Within our firm, if the damage is more than 50% of the liner and it's in critical areas like the sump or the lower part of a graded area, we may have even less because a lot of them get damaged at the top of the berm, which is not as critical as the bottom of the berm. We usually recommend 25 to 30 years. You start thinking about your capital improvement for replacing the liner, but if the liner is in completely good condition and doesn't have many rips or tears, we would not recommend that. But I'll tell you right now. Alaska is really hard on everything, not just liners. One of the things I think everybody listening to this podcast is curious about is what shortens the life of a liner. You touched on some of it, and then I'm going to ask you the transverse, what helps lengthen the life of that liner? Because I think there's a lot people can do to make the conditions better for having a liner last longer. So what shortens life? What lengthens life? What do you think?
Craig Hoffman: 16:15
Yeah, if you want your liner to last a long time, the fabrication and the grade or type of subgrade that you're laying it down on is very important. And to lengthen the life, get it to last as long as you need it to. Don't turn it into something it's not. I mean, you're really laying this stuff down to catch a liquid, not so much for, like Brad had said in the previous question, you know, take human traffic or to be driven on. It's more of a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. Mammoth Cave has lasted as long as it has because it sees minimal traffic. There are even some precautions that the place takes to make sure that the mowers don't get close to it when they're mowing. Those are the two really big things. Yeah, don't use the material for something it's not supposed to.
Shannon: 16:58
I'm hearing that the substrate is important, and I'm guessing not using pokey rocks would be some of the basic, just that.
Craig Hoffman: 17:09
Correct. While XR has, you know, high puncture resistance, the subgrade is very important in any geo membrane application.
Shannon: 17:16
So for lengthening the life of the liner, you're definitely going to want to have an appropriate subgrade, and the less pointy or, the better. You also want to minimize foot traffic and don't use it outside of its design capacity. You know, don't try to make it into something that it's not. What about maintaining rips and pairs right away? Because we see a lot of them that, especially if they're not in that critical low zone, they get left, and I see them get bigger and bigger over the time.
Craig Hoffman: 17:43
Right. We would highly recommend fixing it as soon as you could because things propagate not just in geo membranes. But if something starts to fail and it's not fixed right away, it just gets worse and worse until it's unrepairable or over 50% damaged, as you had specified earlier.
Brad Hochberger: 18:01
A primary benefit to the XR5 is its polyester reinforcement, which gives it its tensile properties, its tear properties, and its puncture resistance.
Shannon: 18:11
And that's that woven fabric that's at the core of it.
Brad Hochberger: 18:14
Exactly.
Shannon: 18:16
Okay.
Brad Hochberger: 18:16
So, in addition to minimal thermal contraction and expansion and contraction, it's a very robust geo membrane compared to some of the other options that are out in the world right?
Shannon: 18:32
It is robust; it's very thick. So I do have something that I see all the time during installation, where there's like a big fold from when they've like installed it, and then over time that fold has like compressed on itself, and we end up with wear and liner failure, basically because that big, thick, super heavy fold got folded over on itself and now it's wearing itself out, typically from wind or traffic on top of that. But I think that's an installation problem, right, they're not supposed to be leaving bigger lumps of it.
Brad Hochberger: 19:03
We're a polymer that's designed to be flexible. If you did use it, perhaps you were doing a cold weather install, and you weren't using our ultra-low temperature coating and the XR5; you could have some issues. So it's important to have the right material for the right application and go all the way through in terms of when the installation is going to occur, especially in Alaska.
Shannon: 19:27
You guys don't install liners, but you have certified installers. Is that correct?
Brad Hochberger: 19:33
Yes, most of our well all of our membranes that end up in the field go through a fabricating facility separate from ours. That fabricator will either have his install crew or a contracted install crew that ultimately takes those panels that have been made in a prefabricated facility, and then they do the final installation at the job site.
Shannon: 19:56
Okay, so we're going to talk about installing the liner because that's a big project for a lot of our clients where they're either overlaying an existing liner that's failed or they've got a new facility and they're installing a new liner for the first time. Forgive the pun, but what are your recommendations for a seamless installation because there are a lot of seams in these larger bulk secondary containment areas? What are some recommendations to sort of literally reduce the amount of seams that you have? I know that when we did the Moose Creek Tank Farm, there were some factory seams that were pre-done for us. We worked ahead with you guys to reduce that. So could you talk a little about making installation easier, especially in remote facilities where we've got more limited resources?
Craig Hoffman: 20:42
So when we talk about an installation, or someone decides to use our material on an installation, obviously, you're going to have seams. The material is only 56 to 75, maybe 100 inches in width, so you're obviously going to have to weld stuff together. The key to XR5 is that a fabricator can purchase these rolled goods and take them to their facility, which is typically clean and environmentally controlled. It allows for a lot more controlled welding, whereas some other materials you have to take out and weld in the field, and in Alaska, there are really cold days, and you can get up to 100 degrees in the summer. There's also dirt and dust and things that could really inhibit the adhesion or the welder itself.
Shannon: 21:29
We see really high humidity in some of our locations that are coastal, and that also affects, I think, some of those welding procedures.
Craig Hoffman: 21:36
Right, because you have moisture in the reaction. I think a factory weld could really be looked at as still part of manufacturing because, I mean, it's still a controlled environment. It's still very clean. You really can't hit seamless welds, but the key is to reduce the field. Weld the uncontrolled welds.
Brad Hochberger: 21:55
Just to add to that, all field welds are inspected, as well as the welds that have been done in a fabrication facility. You can have some atmospheric differences from everything Craig mentioned in terms of moisture or dirt or some other variables, but most often, the installation teams have done this for many years. They're very well adept at it. But the final process is to inspect all the field seams to make sure that they have the integrity that is required. So, essentially, a weld-to-seam is stronger than the fabric itself because you have a double layer over itself, right? So the key is just to make sure you have good weld adhesion. Once you have good weld adhesion, that's not going to weaken over time.
Shannon: 22:42
I agree. And at that Moose Creek facility, we did we well tested every single seam twice, actually because they were worried about groundwater intrusion in that particular instance.
Brad Hochberger: 22:53
Yeah, yeah.
Shannon: 22:55
It was interesting to see the difference between air lancing and vac boxing and how it applied. Those are two different examination techniques that we use there. The Vac boxing is the gold standard, and the air lancing is, I think, what's more typically used, but it was interesting to see both happen and how it turned out. I did want to talk about repairs, because that often involves seam welding as well. When liners live these long lives, like 20, 30, 40 years, repairs are going to happen because they're outside in an industrial context. Do you have any helpful tips for our clients on repairs or how to store excess material for future repairs? sort of general guidelines on seam material overlap because a lot of our clients I don't know that they're bringing out certified contractors to do these repairs. A lot of them are doing them on their own, so I'm curious do you have any tips, tricks, or things to avoid, like how to handle that?
Craig Hoffman: 23:48
It almost goes into having a good weld. The only difference is that this geo membrane has been installed for a while, so make sure the area is really clean with maybe some kind of acetone or a cleaner. And then, you want to make sure that the material that you're laying down over the puncture or tear is dry. You want to store the excess material in a dry location because, as you said, you saw different differences in the welds due to the humidity in the atmosphere. So if your material is dry and the geo membrane is clean, essentially, you'll just cut out a patch, and if you're going to weld it, typically, you want a two-inch weld all the way around.
Shannon: 24:27
What about temperature control for storage? A lot of our places have really limited space where the temperature is controlled throughout the year. Does it matter if it goes through a winter in a summer cycle as long as it's dry? or is temperature-controlled better for repair material?
Brad Hochberger: 24:43
Temperature control would be ideal.
Shannon: 24:46
I thought so.
Brad Hochberger: 24:48
One thing I wanted to add on the repair is just to Craig's points you can apply the repair either with a hot air welder, or we have some adhesive systems gluing that can also be used.
Shannon: 25:03
I think most of the ones we've assisted with were more of like glue or some sort of adhesive that fixed it to it.
Brad Hochberger: 25:10
If you just pulled an adhesive off the shelf somewhere, it would not work. You have to use our adhesive. Because of the chemical resistance of the XR5, you have to have it formulated correctly.
Shannon: 25:21
Gotcha. So XR5 specifically has some built-in stuff.
Brad Hochberger: 25:25
Yeah, if you use a regular vinyl adhesive, it would not bond.
Shannon: 25:29
I've seen everything at this point up to and including putty, seal flex, you name it; Big giant sandbags to isolate the whole. Bricks, bricks, and no shade, no wood. In a really rural location, getting some of these materials and products shipped to you without them being frozen can be pretty challenging, and so they've got to wait a little bit to get these things fixed. Okay, Well, I really appreciate the time that you guys took today. You mentioned one fun fact about the Manmouth Cave. Do you have any other fun facts about liners you wanted to share?
Brad Hochberger: 26:06
The one that I like to tell people is that if you're talking to a layman, I tell them what I kind of do, and I talk about geo membranes. their eyes begin to spin. But when you mentioned the movie Aaron Brockovich and what happened in Southern California with that mining application they had there, if they had had a liner, well, Aaron Brockovich would have never made the movie, and a lot of people would have been alive because there were great rates of cancer.
Shannon: 26:36
Liners are really important. They're a huge tool that almost all of our clients and listeners use to protect the environment and to meet regulatory requirements, and they're a big passive system, so I'm really glad you took the time to talk to us about it today because passive systems do require maintenance and operation, but because they're passive, you can sell fuel and do many things. But I'm really hoping that the listeners of this podcast will pick up some really good tips for the importance of doing things a certain way, picking the right liner from the get-go, understanding what it can and can't do, and what it's meant for. So I really appreciate both your times, Craig and Brad. It was really nice to have you.
Brad Hochberger: 27:16
It was a great morning, thank you.
Craig Hoffman: 27:19
Thanks for listening to letting us talk to you.