Translatated from Pardubice Daily 2006, March 31

Mayors learned how to patch roads in the streets of Moravska Trebova. The Association of Municipalities of Moravska Trebova&Jevicko Region decided to address directly the problem that worries most towns and cities. During their General Assembly meeting they learned in practice. In the damaged roads of the town, a specialized company taught them how to repair holes in roads quickly.

Translatated from Melnik Daily 2006, April 12

Dangerous steps in Melnik repaired!

The steps in the centre of Melnik that had been in dilapidated condition for a very long time were repaired yesterday afternoon. The unpaved edges of the heavily damaged steps were a problem especially for the elderly. Now, pedestrians walking from Fibichova to Vodarenska Street finally don’t need to be afraid they might fall down just in front of the crosswalk.

Road Maintenance want large holes, not cheaper repairs, says glue maker

MFD 5 April, 2011, 18:26

The Road Maintenance in the Pardubice Region have calculated that they need CZK 60 million more than they will get for road repair after the winter. Some roads‘ surface needs changing. A fast glue manufacturer from Pardubice says that the situation would not have to be that bad if repair work had begun earlier without waiting for the holes to become larger.

BG SYS HT has recently introduced to the general public a substance that makes it possible to repair small holes in a road without sophisticated machinery in tens of minutes. The workers resemble bricklayers rather than road workers.

The company’s Executive Manager, Vlastimil Bartel, says that he has been passing by some potholes for many years and they still haven’t disappeared. They have only become bigger: pocket-size holes have become as large as a washbasin.

How much interest is there in your glue?
It is mainly purchased by mayors of small municipalities, who must be able to calculate how to save costs unlike the big cities, which count in millions and are not interested in saving just thousands.

What are the advantages of the substance?
It is not worthwhile for Road Maintenance crews to repair small holes. They need the road to be thoroughly damaged so that it’s worth setting off with an expensive truck, sweeper, milling machine, roadroller, etc. We do cheap repair work using expensive material. Yes, a kilo of asphalt costs two crowns, while BG Quick^® costs over thirty. But where you need a ton of asphalt, just kilos of our material will do. If you repair a pocket-size hole in November or December, it costs fifty crowns, but if you don’t, in the spring it will be as large as a washbasin. And then in the summer you need hundreds of kilos of asphalt.

Can you describe your product in more detail?
It consists of a powder and a liquid component, which are mixed like dry mortar. Because it is waterless, it works even in temperatures around 50 °C below zero. That’s why it’s used especially by Canadian customers. But it has its advantages not only in sub-zero temperatures. It’s foot-traffic ready in ten minutes and car-traffic ready in an hour.

Does the pothole need to be prepared beforehand?
You only need to wash it. Frost and salt are beneficial to the substance. It adheres excellently to any materials.

What is its lifespan?
Potholes repaired with our glue have a much longer lifespan that those repaired with the usual mixtures or concrete, which are only adhesive due to their weight and sometimes they only last a few days. Our oldest references are of twelve years, and we state that the lifespan is twenty years.

 Translated from Reflex #13/2013

HOW TO REPAIR ROADS

The fact that asphalt roads can be repaired in different ways is illustrated by two Czech patents.

Some repair methods heat the surrounding road to make the old and the new asphalt adhere to each other better. That prevents cracks from increasing and the road from crumbling fast. Similar advantages are offered by a special, highly adhesive substance made by BG SYS HT. In addition, it dries quickly and can be used even in sub-zero temperatures, which is appreciated especially by Canadian customers. “These methods have higher purchase costs but longer durability, while the state’s planning results in spending less but also for less durable repairs,” says Ivo Ryc of AFIM.

“Everybody is afraid of saving because the saved costs are taken from them,” says BG SYS HT’s owner Vlastimil Bartel describing his experience with the problematic funding in the public sector. “They can’t calculate the real costs,” adds Bartel. “Asphalt is ten times cheaper but it can’t be used for small holes, which is why only the large ones are repaired with it.”

“With our material you can repair even small cracks, which don’t increase in size afterwards. So, in reality, they require less material and the repair lasts longer.” According to Bartel, the company’s typical customers are smaller municipalities.

TOPIC: Alternative way of road repair (Translatated from Svet motoru 2013 #15)

 

Don’t wait, patch it!

With the spring coming, the typical Czech “Emmental” of the roads has been revealed. Could it be prevented? We have tried one of the alternatives.

 

As the number of its annual rings will tell you the age of a tree, the number of potholes in our roads testify to the length of the past winter. And it is not necessary to go into detail about how severe the winter has been. The reasons are always the same: only a few roads undergo general repair every year. The others, which have been serving extra years anyway, must settle for patching instead of reconstruction. To read more about this vicious circle, see our article “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Now we are freezing on the roadside in Cercany, Central Bohemia, waiting for the presentation of a product whose ambition is not to save Czech roads but which could help. In front of us there is a defect familiar to every other street: the manhole in the middle of the road moves differently than the asphalt, which, as a result, has cracked and crumbled. “If a cyclist or motorcyclist rode into it, he’d be in trouble,” says Vlastimil Bartel, the inventor of the BG Quick method, while the repair work begins.

Patch!

His company promises quite an easy solution: patching the pothole. “Once there’s a defect in the road, it must be repaired immediately,” says Bartel. “If you don’t do it, it’s as if you didn’t replace a missing tile in your roof. The roof leaks and the roof frame is damaged. In the past there were road workers who knew that if you repair the road at once, you only need a little bit of material and that’s it, but if you don’t, you will need ten times as much material after the winter,” he explains. So, if the road is repaired immediately, not much is needed and the road doesn’t suffer any more and the defect does not spread. The trick lies in the fact that BG Quick will adhere to any surface including metal and works in sub-zero temperatures, when the road maintenance are hibernating or just salting the streets and plowing away the snow. “It also works at –50 °C, which enables us to do repair work, for instance, in freezing plants,” continues Bartel, adding that this method has achieved great success in the cold Canada and Scotland.

Like epoxy

The substance is similar to epoxy. “It’s a two-component inorganic polymer,” says its inventor while his employees are blowing and spraying the potholes. “It may sound surprising, but the product shows the best adherence on a surface sprayed with brine,” says Bartel about his product’s advantage in winter repairs. That is why they rinse the holes with brine, which works up to –7 °C. If the temperature is lower and exceeds the level at which brine freezes, the company uses another antifreeze. The only kind of weather in which the product can’t be used is heavy rain.

 

Just pour it

Once the potholes are clean, the workers start mixing the substance with a power mixer on the roadside. “Another advantage is that it sets very quickly. We state that within an hour the repaired part of the road is traffic ready,” says the producer while his employees begin to pour the substance into the potholes and spread it with trowels. “It doesn’t look nice, but it will last,” comments Bartel, showing us pictures of repairs which have lasted more than seven years.

He claims that the substance is ten times as expensive as asphalt but only very little of it is needed. It can even be diluted with gravel. “And that’s the problem we are facing. They keep telling us that we are crazy because they compare the prices per ton. But with hour technology, you only need one person – it could even be someone ordered to do community service – to put a little bit of the substance in a pocket-size hole. There’s no need to wait for the hole to become big enough for it to be worth sending all the road maintenance machinery,” he adds.

That is why most of his customers are smaller municipalities. “It is simple: they won’t get five million for reconstruction. But they can afford to spend twenty thousand and they know the road will still last for some time,” says Bartel.

“We have two thousand references like this but the Road Maintenance Directorate won’t use our product. They say it would damage their milling machines and that it can’t be recycled,” he explains. However, according to Bartel, neither statement is true. The more likely reason is a lobby of large companies that need to use the machinery they bought.

Finished in half an hour

Less than an hour has passed since we arrived and several potholes are car-traffic ready. Is this the solution to damaged roads? It is not likely because without extensive and high-quality repairs we will continue robbing Peter to pay Paul. It might be worth trying whether that small part of the crumbling road is worth repairing immediately in the sleet in which the damage happened, without waiting for the newspapers to write about somebody’s broken wheel.

 

Before the repair it is necessary to clean the damaged places 1, blow away dust and wash it with water or brine 2. Then the repair substance is mixed 3, which can be applied to damaged places immediately 4. The inventor says the work resembles that of a bricklayer 5. The place is car-traffic ready within an hour 6.

 

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Why are some of our roads referred to as “Czech Emmental”, not in relation to quality but to the number of holes? We tried to find out in the 25/2011 issue. Because no visible changes have happened since then, we can quote from it: “This state is caused by several factors. Frequently, the elementary principles of applying suitable technology as well as technological discipline are not adhered to. In some cases, the reason lies in repair work done in unsuitable weather conditions despite time-tested good practice,” explained Ludvik Vebr, head of the Road Construction Department at Czech Technical University. He spoke very specifically about other causes as well: “Another reason is lack of money, as a result of which the cause of the defect is not eliminated and we only try to ensure the roads are traffic ready. The technology used is not in compliance with the origin of the defect and cheap methods are used to eliminate as many defects as possible. However, the repairs are only short-term then. Technologies that are of only temporary nature are applied as permanent solutions. Maintenance – the cleaning of roads and ditches, maintenance of vegetation and soft shoulders – is not sufficient either,” he said.

Martina Vapeniková of the Road Maintenance Directorate, which manages many roads, agrees with him in principle: “Due to lack of funds for continuous repairs, local repairs of potholes don’t have a long lifespan. In the case of deeper potholes, the same repair work might have to be done again in a year,” she admits. Two years ago we also wrote about alternative solutions like the one we tried today. “We can imagine using such method for a single pothole or dig but for the removal of more serious defects we should stick to the time-tested domestic as well as foreign technologies,” added Vebr.

Repairs Calculation

Typical method
Date	Size of defect	Status	Reason
October 2001	Long crack, 2mm in width and 2cm in depth	Not repaired	Technologically unsuitable for asphalt
March 2002	Width increased to 5cm by frost	Not repaired	Too small, not worth bringing a milling machine
April 2003	Increased by frost into several holes, 50cm in diameter and 10cm in depth	Not repaired	Waiting for suitable weather conditions
September 2004	Repaired with cold asphalt mix after milling the hole to 200x50x10 cm	Repaired	Too small a job for hot asphalt mix
February 2005	Patch cracked, palm-sized pieces of 10cm in depth loosened	Not repaired	Waiting for suitable weather conditions

Costs of repair using asphalt mix
Transportation of milling machine	CZK 500
1/2 hour of milling	CZK 250
Loading and transporting milled asphalt (0.25 tons)	CZK 100
Hazardous waste disposal	CZK 500
Cold asphalt mix – purchase, transportation and application (0.25 tons)	CZK 1,250
Filling the crack	CZK 80
Supervision and traffic signs (half a day)	CZK 500
Total for repair	CZK 3,180
Total for 20 years (new repair expected every four years)	CZK 15,900

BG Quick®
Date	Size of defect	Status
October 2001	Long crack, 2mm in width and 2cm in depth	Repaired
February 2005	Still in good repair – nothing can be cracked by water or frost

Costs of repair using BG QUICK®
Cleaning the crack	CZK 50
Bringing and applying BG Quick® (0,07kg)	CZK 250
Supervision and traffic signs (1 hour)	CZK 200
Total for repair	CZK 500
Total for 20 years – no need to repair again	CZK 500
One-time saving	84%

 Translated from PARAMO in-house magazine

Popping in to Paramo

Honorary consul of the Czech Republic in Canada, Jerry J. Jelinek (center), visited Paramo at the end of last year.

What interested the consul in our company was especially the ceramic coatings that extend the lifespan of high-temperature devices. These coatings were applied to the economizer of the K1 boiler and to the vacuum distillation furnace by BG SYS HT s. r. o., a company focused on introducing the most advanced material engineering technologies.

According to maintenance manager Miroslav Horak, Jerry J. Jelinek, accompanied by the Executive Manager of BG SYS HT, Vlastimil Bartel, was really satisfied with his visit to Paramo. M. Horák attended to the guests the whole time of their visit to the refinery and gave them a general presentation of the company.

Translated from TT #10/2008                          About a technology that deserves more attention

 

How to save money in boilers

It would seem that nobody will refuse a technology that increases the lifespan of different mechanical parts and linings of different boilers and saves fuel as well. Although BG HitCoat^®, which can do all of that, has been on the Czech market for over 10 years, it is not used as much as it deserves. It is worth mentioning that the most important foreign owners of power plants and heating plants in the Czech Republic discovered the advantages of BG HitCoat^® very quickly and they order it regularly while Czech companies, including the largest one, do not. What product is this?

 

Lightning-fast drying

BG HitCoat^® is a very interesting material. It is a ceramic coating which is not applied in an unmelted state by plasma, unlike other ceramic coatings, but with an ordinary spray gun or with a brush from aqueous suspensions. It dries as fast as lightning and the productivity of its application is excellent: hundreds of square meters within a work shift. So, the spraying is done directly in the boilers without disassembly. And it can be begun immediately without prolonging the temporary shutdown. BG HitCoat^® shows extreme adhesion of 10–15MPa to all common construction materials: carbon streel, low-alloy steel, stainless and heat resistant steel and any other lining materials (e.g. SiC). The reason is that during hardening it adheres to the base first and then polymerizes. As a result, there is no internal stress.

However, that is not all. BG HitCoat’s thermal endurance is more than 1,800 °C; it has great resistance to thermal shock, provides protection against corrosion and prevents the sticking of slug or other deposits that often cause significant problems in boilers, whether it is in the membrane walls or in burners. All of these properties have allowed tens of thousands of square meters of BG HitCoat® to be applied, to the investors’ satisfaction, in the Czech Republic, as you can see in the reference list on the Internet. The most frequent application is for the protection of the inner tubes of economizers against abrasion caused by fly ash or against corrosion caused by acid condensates. It also eliminates the blockage of the inside of the pipes of air preheaters.

Ceramic on ceramic?

How does BG HitCoat^® work in linings? It might seem that ceramic on ceramic is nonsense. But BG HitCoat® seals pores (which are often continuous) of ordinary linings and prevents the furnace atmosphere from entering them. As a result it eliminates the subsequent processes which cause tension and cracking inside linings, and therefore, it increases the lifespan of linings up to four times. Similarly, BG HitCoat^® increases the lifespan of fibrous insulation (such as SIBRAL), which have a number of advantages (they have good insulating power, are light and dry and can be installed quickly) but one big disadvantage: they have low mechanical resistance. If the furnace atmosphere flows very fast, which is usual, the insulation becomes damaged (fiberized). However, if the surface of such insulation is protected by BG HitCoat^®, its surface strength is close to that of brick and it does not fiberize any more.

In relation to looking for alternative or cheaper fuel sources for boilers, the burning of biomass has often been mentioned recently. That brings problems that have been unknown so far. Firstly, there is an enormous increase in the amount of sticking substances that clog the boiler. Secondly, due to the content of elements like sulfur, chlorine, fluorine, etc., condensation and corrosion occur in organic material in such parts of the boiler where they are not if conventional fuel is being burnt. The application of BG HitCoat^® helps here as well, like in the case of burning South African coal, which is cheap but contains impurities that we did not know before.

What about saving fuel? BG HitCoat^® increases the efficiency of the boiler in several ways. If there are deposits or substances stuck to the heat-transfer surfaces, after being sprayed with the product they remain clean and the heat is transferred without interruption. Different substances often stick to coal or mazut burners, whose geometry is then changed and their efficiency decreases significantly. After being sprayed with BG HitCoat^® the burners remain clean and the efficiency of burning is unchanged. If the boiler has a porous lining, hot combustion products often get to the outer steel casing and increase its temperature. Of course, that causes an increase in heat loss. After the outer casing is sprayed with BG HitCoat^®, its temperature drops by several degrees and the boiler’s heat rate increases.

What a black body is

However, it is the emission properties of BG HitCoat^® that have the biggest impact. That is connected with the absorption and radiation of heat. The heat obtained by burning fuel is best used if as large a part of it as possible is transferred by radiation directly into the pipes in which water is turned into vapor by heat. The remaining heat escapes into the chimney in the form of waste gases although part of it is captured by other heat-transfer surfaces (e.g. economizers) but at substantially lower temperatures. The ideal heat absorber is the “black body,” whose efficiency is 100%. It is a theoretical term known in physics. The construction materials in boilers, such as steel or heat-resistant brick have a significantly lower radiation efficiency, between 45% and 63%. The rest of the heat that is not transferred by radiation into the pipes heats up the combustion products, i.e. water vapor and carbon dioxide. But the emissivity (i.e. absorption and radiation efficiency) of BG HitCoat^® is over 93%! What happens after the walls of the combustion chamber are sprayed with BG HitCoat^®? The heat is absorbed by the sprayed layer of BG HitCoat^® and radiated with 93% efficiency but on different wavelengths than originally. These wavelengths do not uselessly heat the combustion products – they heat the surface of the pipes and the water in them. Therefore, the heat rate of the process is increased. Fuel saving of 8% and a 6% increase in production have been recorded. With boilers already in operation it is difficult to change the ratio between the use of radiant heat and the use of other heat because the size and shape of the heat-transfer surfaces is given. However, if the impact of the emissive coat of sprayed BG HitCoat^® was already taken into account when a new boiler is being designed, we could substantially reduce the size of its exchangers at the low-temperature levels. At this point we must complain a bit about the conservatism of boiler manufacturers, who obstinately insist on using their fifty-year-old procedures. We are still looking for the first courageous person who would be ready to cooperate with us. We have already succeeded in the petrochemical industry but not in power engineering. Take this as a challenge.