SEND THEM ALL TO THE SALT MINES!

The Maori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa, 'the land of the long white cloud' ... an evocative name for a beautiful country. However, clouds don’t stay white for ever and where there are clouds, rain will surely follow. For a salt mine, rain can be a problem, as you can see in the picture on the right.

The perfect corrosion recipe

Take several tonnes of salt, sprinkle with rain and liberally apply to a steel surface. There's no need for an oven, the steel will brown perfectly ... with a crisp, flaky coating of rust. It's a familiar story for the operators of this salt mine in New Zealand - they can see it wherever they look and have tried many solutions. 

But corrosion is not their only problem, salt gets into everything and causes major problems in operating machinery, contaminating bearings and severely shortening the lifespan of conveyor systems that are vital to keep the salt moving. So, when the company heard of Enviropeel and its ability to provide both ingress and corrosion protection, they were eager to see what it could do.

What goes around comes around

In New Zealand, IMG (Integrated Maintenance Group) have long been the 'go to' place for innovative asset management solutions and have been Enviropeel enthusiasts for many years. A former employee of IMG had taken over operational management of the mining site and knew that Enviropeel was a perfect answer to many of their problems and brought IMG in to help. It was decided that the best way to proceed was to provide some on-site training with applications on a variety of substrates to familiarise the company with the use and potential of Enviropeel. As well as applications to prevent ingress on bearings, areas of the main steel structure were also chosen for protection. As the pictures show, heavy exfoliating rust was present on older parts of the structure and in some areas new steel infrastructure had been installed. After some equipment and application demonstrations, both new and old areas were chosen for protection. The old areas were prepared to remove the loose and flaking rust prior to application. With training and application completed, Enviropeel is expected to be deployed across the site, greatly reducing the threat from corrosion.