Abstract
Over the past 15 years increasing concern with offshore safety has meant increased consideration and use of fire protection systems. The traditional cementitious based materials have been found in a number of instances not to give satisfactory performance in the highly corrosive offshore environment and, consequently, because of this and weight, have been largely replaced by epoxy intumescent systems suitable for hydrocarbon jet fires.
There is a belief that this automatically solves durability/corrosion problems, however, experience has shown this not to be the case, with epoxy intumescents having variable properties, depending on individual formulations and especially the basic polymer systems used. Epoxy Intumescent coatings have to be extensively fire tested to International standards to prove their fire performance, but what happens to that performance over time when it is subjected to a wet environment?
Consideration is given to the affect of wet environments on the various components of epoxy intumescents, which have various degrees of water sensitivity with consequential effect on performance.
This paper looks at laboratory work on a number of epoxy intumescent formulations both to inhouse and to published standards, and considers the results in terms of likely long-term field performance in a wet environment both in terms of durability and fire protection.
