Self-sealing coatings for fuel pipelines

Fuel leakage accidents of storage facilities and pipelines are one of greatest threats to the environment, life safety and economics. Appling self-sealing coating to pipe surface is an economical and effective method to prevent the fuel leakage. Now a high oil-absorption resin was designed and synthesised by suspension polymerisation. The oil-absorption performance and oil-absorption volume expansion ratio of the high oil-absorption resin for gasoline, kerosene, and diesel were characterised, respectively.

Excellent expanding in volume performance

The saturated absorption rate of the high oil-absorption resin for gasoline reached 11.14 g/g, and the volume of the high oil-absorption resin expanded to 6 times when the absorption was saturated. The high oil-absorption resin, as a functional filler to polyurethane resin, exhibited excellent expanding in volume performance to seal the hole of the composite coating. The composite coating with 25 wt% of the high oil-absorption resin sealed a hole of 1.5 mm in diameter in 1 min. As A bottle with filled by kerosene was perforated by a needle with 3 mm in diameter, the composite coating with 25 wt% of the high oil-absorption resin was successfully instantaneous sealed the leak.

The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 166, May 2022.