Revolutionary Stainless Steel Jacketing - Introducing SoundMet

Our unique, powerful and successful collaboration with the Sheffield Hallam University has been continuing over the last two years and the groundbreaking results - SoundMet and CoolMet - were recently unveiled to great admiration in exclusive press releases. Both systems are set to be revolutionary in the insulation jacketing sector, with major potential savings being offered to its users; these users will include power stations, LNG & FLNG facilities and petrochemical processing plants, among others.

The current method used to insulate pipes involves several steps, the first of which is to surround the pipe completely with suitable insulation. This insulation is then firmly wrapped in MLV (mass-loaded vinyl) acoustic insulation before the whole system is further enclosed in stainless steel cladding which is sealed and secured with banding and wingseals. Resulting in a metal-to-metal contact at the overlaps which makes it susceptible to galvanic corrosion in the presence of moisture and leads to CUI (corrosion under insulation), this sometimes-ineffective method of sealing will be completely changed using SoundMet, which transfers the bond to that of metal-to-MLV. The resulting join is far stronger than traditional sealing methods and has been proven to be so in a range of pull-out tests.

As well as preventing CUI, using SoundMet will also save a business, time and money in other ways. These include the damping of vibration and sound which leads to reduced energy wastage and hence improved efficiency and, perhaps most importantly, the innovative integration of stainless steel jacketing and MLV. This latter quality means that man-hours are substantially reduced when installing SoundMet, as employees can insulate the pipe in a single pass. The hourly rates charged by installers of such jacketing are known to be expensive, particularly in the USA, Canada and Australia.

We are now adding the finishing touches and analysing the data obtained by exhaustive tests on SoundMet. These final stages include the installation of state-of-the-art in-house machinery at our premises, which will allow us to produce the system to bespoke requirements. We look forward to providing SoundMet regularly in the first few months of 2015 and sharing the revolutionary design at Gastech Singapore.

The creation and development of SoundMet is a major step forward for both BS Stainless and Sheffield Hallam University. For more details on CoolMet, which perfectly complements SoundMet and offers a superior solar-reflective outer coating, please subscribe to our newsletter to receive the upcoming article.