SOUNDMET® vs Lead Acoustic Jacketing — The Results
Gas and oil pipelines require robust protection from environmental conditions while adequately preventing heat loss, reducing health and safety risks and complying with all relevant legislation. Additional layers, where noise and vibration is an issue, are often required and SOUNDMET® is proving a revolutionary force in these applications.
Traditionally, installing metal jacketing to insulate against vibration and noise would be a costly, labour-intensive process involving the use of bitumen or lead: both of these products are known to have potentially hazardous health effects and can be damaging to the environment though continue to be specified for many crude oil and LNG applications due to their good insulating and acoustical properties.
SOUNDMET® was designed and developed to cost-effectively mitigate the problems posed by the conventional metal jacketing technique, a barrier that would provide enhanced acoustic insulation without using any products considered a risk to HSE (Health, Safety and Environment). A revolutionary system, which involves bonding vinyl barrier to metal sheet, it has been proven to be more efficient at reducing unwanted pipeline noise.
All testing was carried out by Professor Horoshenkov for Bradford University. As can be seen from our graphs, the improvement compared to lead is quite clear, without any of the negative properties. The bonding process, where mass-loaded vinyl is securely affixed to the metal jacketing, is shown to significantly improve noise-dampening quality and surpasses traditional lead-based acoustic jacketing systems.
Pipelines are responsible for adding to the ambient noise at facilities such as LNG plants. The level of sound that employees can legally work at without ear protection continues to be reduced and SOUNDMET® is helping to keep sound contained, protecting employees while also improving the efficiency of machinery. Mass Loaded vinyl is recyclable as are stainless steel and aluminium, so whichever combination you choose they can eventually be re-used.