Spirally wound method of making one-piece homogeneous thermoplastic cylinders enables the design of chemical tanks, vessels and equipment that could not be considered in straight thermoplastic.
When one of the UK's leading manufacturers of high quality inorganic fine chemicals approached Chem Resist it was desperate to find a material and a method of construction that would stand up to the demands of processing zirconium containing slurries. Although 'inorganic fine chemicals' sound innocuous, the range of processing conditions include aggressive and hot mixtures of chemicals such as sulphuric, hydrochloric and nitric acids, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide and caustic soda. The company traditionally used lined tanks including rubber lined steel, fluoroplastic lined steel and celmar, materials which in the arduous conditions experienced were prone to sudden failure.

This led to a search for new materials.

Chem Resist's development of a spirally wound method of manufacturing one-piece homogeneous thermoplastic cylinders enables the design and manufacture of chemical tanks, vessels and equipment that could not previously be considered in straight thermoplastic.

As a result, a 12m3 HDPE vessel with a solid homogeneous wall thickness of 100mm was manufactured and installed.

Since the initial installation, the company has replaced several of its traditional lined vessels and has installed further vessels on its new projects.

Chem Resist can make spiral wound plastic tanks with volumes over 100m3.