The new Heat-Flex 7000 thermal insulative from Sherwin-Williams ensures personnel protection, insulating capabilities and solar heat reflectivity.
The Protective & Marine division of the international paints and coatings manufacturer Sherwin-Williams
has recently presented the new single-component Heat-Flex® 7000 coating, a spray-applied thermal insulative system that ensures insulating capabilities and solar heat reflectivity for several industrial applications. It meets Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for protecting personnel from skin-contact burns on assets operating at temperatures up to 350° F (177° C) in one coat.
The new coating developed by Sherwin-Williams can be employed to protect heat-sensitive assets such as tanks, fuel pipelines and water-cooling lines from solar heat gain in both indoor or outdoor environments in order to maintain a lower internal operating temperature, which can subsequently help to reduce the loss of fuels or cooling water due to vaporisation, as well as reduce the need for expensive vapor-recovery or cooling equipment.
The system features new technology that yields a thick and fully cured coating film with a high volume that effectively resists the transfer of heat from the underlying substrate to the surface, as well as from the surface to the substrate. As a matter of fact, it forms a closed-cell film that resists moisture penetration – from rain, water sprays or humidity – far more effectively than conventional insulation. Therefore, its thermal efficiency remains consistent in even the wettest conditions. So, the coating also reduces thermal losses on assets that need to stay warmer or diminishes solar heat gain on assets that need to stay cooler.
It is possible to apply Heat-Flex 7000 in a single coat – typically 50-75 mils dry film thickness (DFT) – directly on hot substrates over a required corrosion-resistant primer and then eliminate the costs of installing, inspecting and repairing conventional insulation and cladding systems for personnel skin-contact protection, thereby also avoiding the common threat of corrosion under insulation (CUI).
“Heat-Flex 7000 represents a step-change in our insulative coatings technology. Because of its new chemistry and formulation, a single topcoat of Heat-Flex 7000 can protect personnel from skin-contact burns on process assets operating at up to 350°F. A single topcoat of this new product also provides a significant level of insulating value that can help to prevent process heat losses or, conversely, to protect against solar radiant heat gain, which can otherwise cause vaporization losses in storage tanks. Other coating products often require multiple coats to provide similar personnel protection and insulating value,” has stated Neil Wilds, the global product director for CUI/Testing at the Protective & Marine division of Sherwin-Williams.