Foamed insulation coating on pipes and methods therefor
AssigneeShawcor Ltd.
InventorsRoberto Varagnolo, Marcos Mockel, Catherine Lam, Dennis Wong
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of providing a foamed insulation coating on at least a portion of a pipe, including extruding a melt stream over the pipe portion. The melt stream includes a matrix polymer and expandable fillers in an unexpanded state, the melt stream being maintained at a sufficiently high temperature to maintain the matrix polymer in extrudable form and at a sufficiently high pressure to maintain the expandable fillers in the unexpanded state. Once extruded, the expandable fillers are permitted to expand into an expanded state at a lower pressure.
Claims16
A method of providing a foamed insulation coating on at least a portion of a pipe, the method comprising:
- extruding a melt stream over at least the portion of the pipe, the melt stream comprising a matrix polymer and expandable fillers in an unexpanded state, the melt stream being maintained at a sufficiently high temperature to maintain the matrix polymer in extrudable form and at a sufficiently high pressure to maintain the expandable fillers in the unexpanded state;
- and
- permitting the expandable fillers in the extruded melt stream to expand into an expanded state at a lower pressure and permitting the matrix polymer to set, to form the foamed insulation coating.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.