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Army Corps of Engineers Tests Fire-Protective Coating at Rock Island Arsenal’s Manufacturing Center Army Corps of Engineers Tests Fire-Protective Coating at Rock Island Arsenal’s Manufacturing Center
To prosecute vital ground missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and worldwide, the Army depends on Rock Island Arsenal. Rock Island Arsenal is home to 70 organizations that provide products and services to the Army, Navy, and Marines, including the Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center (JMTC). The JMTC houses an Army factory that produces combat weapons and such equipment as the M198 and M119 Towed Howitzers, artillery systems operated by crews behind the frontlines. Rock Island Arsenal is located on an island in the Mississippi River between Iowa and Illinois. This installation is historically and geographically unique. The island itself is three miles long and nearly one mile wide. It sits 162 miles west of Chicago and 180 miles east of Des Moines, Iowa. The town of Rock Island is one of the Quad cities that converge along the northern Mississippi River, which include Moline, Illinois, and the nearby Iowa towns of Davenport and Bettendorf. Rock Island also encompasses Saukenuk, the now-defunct historic birthplace of Black Hawk, the Sauk Native American tribe leader and war chief who fought with the English against the Americans during the War of 1812. The JMTC at Rock Island Arsenal is recognized as the largest Army factory in the western world. Notably, the JMTC has the Army’s only metal manufacturing facility and the only remaining foundry in the U.S., operated by the Army. The Center relies on myriad capabilities as it provides equipment for U.S. troops. These processes include machining, tool/gage manufacturing, castings, investment casting, forging, gear/spring manufacturing, shot blasting, welding, laser cutting, three-D modeling, surface finishing, assembly, and packaging. The Center produces gun mounts and an array of assemblies for tools and toolkits used to repair field equipment. The JMTC at Rock Island Arsenal is the only domestic producer of the M119A2 105-mm Howitzer, the forward repair system, and the shop equipment contact maintenance system.
Corps of Engineers Tests Fire-Protective Coating While searching for a place to test an innovative fire-protective coating technology in 2005, the Army Corps of Engineers considered the JMTC’s array of old and new mission-critical structures at Rock Island Arsenal, and its importance as an Army equipment producer. Fire protection is a concern at the installation’s maintenance facilities. Using approximately $887,000 provided to the Corps’ Engineer Research and Development Center, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) by the DoD Corrosion Office and the Army’s Installation Management Command, Susan Drozdz, a CERL chemist and project leader, teamed up with project engineer Hugh Halverson and other maintenance staff to begin the project. A Corrosive Situation at Rock Island Arsenal’s Coal-Fired Heating Plant In the spring of 2007 Drozdz and Halverson began supervising the coating project at a coal-fired heating plant and a JMTC manufacturing facility. The latter was used as an equipment warehouse during World War II. Rock Island Arsenal’s central heating plant consists of boilers that burn coal. The plant creates steam and pipes it throughout the island buildings, providing steam heat. During the 1980s, in particular, the flue gases emitted by the boilers created a pollution problem. "Nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide are emitted by these boilers and they can form acid rain," said Hugh Halverson, a project engineer at the Directorate of Public Works—Army Garrison Rock Island Arsenal, who managed the project on site. "If humidity conditions are right in the area, the dew that forms on structures adjacent to the plant contains acid that etches paint and other coatings.”
"The heating plant presents a highly corrosive situation," said Drozdz. "Burning coal produces sulfur compounds that are very corrosive to steel. The coal-fired heating plant, in turn, creates a highly corrosive microclimate within its immediate surroundings. Generally, the steel in the plant is exposed to more corrosive conditions than other buildings on the island." After new EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations were put in place, Rock Island Arsenal built two bag houses that each hold 1,440 vertical-hanging bags to curb polluting emissions. "Each bag house is a metal box that functions like a giant vacuum cleaner," said Halverson. "A fan will suck air through each bag house and collect dirt and particulates, and contain corrosive emissions." When the Corps of Engineers looked for a place to test a new fire-protective coating, Halverson suggested that they coat the support columns in each of the plant’s bag houses as well as the stair tower used in case of emergency. "A contractor painted these columns in August of 2007," said Drozdz. The coating system selected for the study is used widely in industrial processes and on vehicles and equipment where there is a need to reduce the risk of fire, Drozdz explained. "The paint goes on around a half-inch thick," Drozdz said. "When the paint is exposed to the heat of a fire, it reacts and turns into a thicker layer of a foam-like ’char.’ The process is like those snakes that kids burn on the fourth of July—the pellets that turn into a foamy, ashy ’snake’ of material when you set them on fire. In the event of a fire, the paint will turn into this char, which contains an insulating quality to protect the steel from the fire’s heat for a period that allows people to safely exit a building, and in time to put the fire out before the structure itself is damaged." "The intumescent coating—the layer underneath the topcoat—consists of 100 percent solids, meaning it doesn’t contain solvents," Drozdz said. "It is an epoxy that cures through the chemical reaction of two components. The materials are very viscous at ambient temperature, and so they are heated in order to bring them to a sprayable condition before they are applied." "We plan to monitor how the new coating is performing for a year and report on our findings afterwards. In addition, the Corps has installed a test rack containing coupons with the fire-protective coating a few feet from one wall of the heating plant in order to monitor the coatings’ performance for at least two years. On that rack we put the standard Army paint system, the new fire-protective coating system that we used, and some competitors’ paint systems. I’m also doing an ASTM (American Society of Testing and Materials) accelerated exposure test so we see differences in all of these coatings more quickly." Coating a Mission-Critical Manufacturing Warehouse
Building 299, now part of Rock Island Arsenal’s JMTC, served as a warehouse during World War II. While the U.S. started mobilizing for war in 1939, serious preparations began in 1940. By this time the Ordnance Corps had exceeded their storage space at Rock Island Arsenal, explained George Eaton, a historian at the Army Sustainment Command—Rock Island Arsenal. "Construction began in April 1941 and Building 299 was in operation by June 1942," Eaton said. "At the time Rock Island Arsenal was an ordnance depot and an arsenal, making it a central distribution point for repair parts. Building 299’s design encompasses 18 acres, which is over 784,000 square feet. As the largest military supply warehouse in the U.S. at the time, Building 299 was used for the storage and distribution of parts for combat vehicles and weapons." At 1,400 feet by 540 feet, Building 299 spans the size of at least 17 football fields. Its exterior walls are made of concrete and steel columns that support the roof, Halverson explained. Portions of Building 299 have stood empty until now, but as a result of the DoD’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, the Army is preparing to move a new mission into the building to fabricate metal parts, Halverson said. During the Corps of Engineers’ test project, Halverson supervised the coating of 25 columns—each of which is 14 feet tall—in two bays of the building as part of the Corps of Engineers’ test project. "We put the fire-protective coating on the steel columns that are located near the cleaning tanks where acid-etching or "pickling" will take place," Halverson said. "At CERL we see a need for this type of coating system at certain Army facilities where corrosion is a problem, and where the risk of fire to personnel and property is a real threat," Drozdz said."Since we don't have much direct experience with this type of coating system, we appreciate that the JMTC has worked with us to implement the system at two different buildings, so that we can monitor its performance in two sets of conditions." "Since we don’t have any experience with the coating, we are watching its performance in the heating plant and in Building 299," she added. "Ironically, to really test the merits of this coating, something would have to burn down. We hope this coating isn’t put to such a hard test."
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