Meeting the challenge of housing corrosive cargoes
Whether it’s grain, wood or metal, port operators need to consider various factors when choosing the right storage habitat. But what happens when operators are looking for a place to store corrosive materials?
This was a dilemma facing logistics and transportation company Grupo CICE. The company needed a safe storage place for the organic compound urea, as it arrived at the port of Veracruz. Because of urea’s corrosive properties, it can attack aluminium and galvanised steel when exposed to humidity. A further problem posed was the industrial and marine exposures from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico which can affect metal.
Geometrica produced a solution that would withstand corrosive attacks from inside and outside the building. The storage building’s skeletal frame was made from high strength aluminium alloy with FRP cladding applied to the structure’s underside in order to protect the aluminium from urea’s corrosive properties.
The end result was that the building materials were exposed only to the conditions that they could withstand: the basic aluminium structure is resistant to the corrosive atmosphere while the polymer cladding can endure the urea.