removable-insulation-mattresses-and-textile-insulation-covers-at-food-production-plant

Why removable insulation mattresses or flexible textile insulation covers are great insulation solution for your industrial projects?

 

The main advantages of removable insulation mattresses are:

Removable insulation jackets can benefit your industrial and architectural project. Especially while we improved the manufacturing process by using in-house CNC insulation cutting service. If you wonder how this can be done it probably means that you already consider it as a product in your design or for your existing or upcoming  projects. 

Whether it is a power plant, ship, brewery, office building, train station or a tunnel insulation mattresses also called textile insulation jackets or covers can bring a lot of technical and commercial advantages to the investors and facility managers.

Insulation mattresses are easy to install

First of all, insulation mattresses are much easier to install than traditional insulation materials with metal sheet jacketing. We all know that even components of high quality sometimes break down or require some sort of maintenance or inspections.  Very often these parts are covered with insulation.

Someone needs to remove it before engineers can do their work on mechanical components. Thermal or acoustic insulation with metal sheet jackets can be fragile if not handled with care.

Sometimes you not only need specialist tools, but also specific skills of thermal insulation engineer. Once your remove insulation you need to pay a lot of attention in storing and re-installation of these materials. Insulation mats can fall off and even require full replacement.

Our customer informed us that they had frequent problems when insulation boxes from metal sheets were removed  during maintenance.

These boxes were often stored without any protection. Also, boxes were sometimes stacked one on top of another or box parts were kept in different locations. This method caused dents, scratches and missing material parts.

metal valve-boxes-removed-from-valves
Valve insulation metal boxes removed from valves

When plant owners changed insulation boxes to removable insulation covers they were able to reduce the costs of materials and improve productivity of the maintenance teams. These operatives did not have to repair damaged boxes and didn’t have to waste time to look for the missing parts. 

In such cases textile removable insulation jackets are more “user friendly”

Insulation mats are enclosed within the textile cover. Even after removal these mats will not fall off and will not get damaged easily. Usually working with insulation mattresses does not require any specialist tools. Most frequently Velcro straps are used as a fixing method. These straps can be fixed manually.

Even if you use removable textile insulation covers in vibrating environment and fix them with more robust method of fixing like for example steel wire, this operation only requires set of pliers.

Removable insulation blankets can sustain harsh and corrosive environment

removable-insulation-cover-manhole

Secondly, textile insulation does not corrode. Flexible insulation jackets are produced from high quality and durable textile materials covered either with Teflon or silicone coating.

Thanks to these specialist coatings insulation mattresses have an advantage over metal sheet cladding which can be subject to corrosion. Teflon or silicone coating stops water, oils or acids from reacting with the textile material.

More importantly it creates a barrier to protect insulation inside from soaking in any liquid. Even if you use stainless steel metal sheet jackets there is always a risk that these can be scratched or hit. Even a tiny damage to the surface may result in corrosion some time in the future.

Insulation mattress can be used for a variety of purposes and applications

Insulation mattresses can serve for several purposes. Main application areas are thermal protection like for turbine insulation, however, it can also be used as acoustic insulation. Noise absorption can be applied for a wide range of applications from industrial to architectural projects. On industrial plants insulation mattresses can help is reducing noise coming from mechanical equipment.

These removable insulation blankets can be installed on fans, ducts or compensators. When it comes to architectural use insulation mattress can be applied on suspended ceilings or wall cladding. They work great with standard suspended ceilings from Lindner or SAS. Additionally, insulation mattress can be easily fitted on metal ceilings or glass fibre reinforced concrete panels.

Removable insulation jackets provide faster return of investment for the plant or ship owner or operator

Insulation-Mattresses-Valves-Photo

Last but not least, it is cheaper in the long run to use flexible insulation covers. You may think that removable insulation mattresses are more expensive when compared directly to the wire mats or insulation boards with metal sheet jacketing.

However, we need to take into consideration a few other factors in order to make honest comparison. For example, installation time which also costs money is shorter with insulation mattresses.

What is more, due to the longer lifetime, easier maintenance and low risk of damage, textile insulation jackets pay for themselves within a couple of years from original installation.

Insulation mattresses sustain more frequent removal and re-installation programmes. What is more, in order to remove and re-install them you don’t need specialist insulation contractor. This work can be carried out by your mechanical maintenance team. It means that you spend less on labour services. 

Therefore they are more economic solution for power plant, nuclear plant insulation, brewery or ship owners or operators. You do not need to replace insulation mattresses  so often as traditional insulation with metal sheet cladding.

Of course these are not all the benefits of using textile insulation covers, however, these are the most important that you as the procurement and technical team member should consider when purchasing insulation material for your projects.

You can also find out how we manage supply of removable insulation jackets for valves here.

 

Genreal FAQ about insulation mattresses

What are insulation mattresses?

Insulation mattress is a type of removable insulation product which consists of main insulation filler material and textile cover tightly wrapped around it with sewn joints.

What is removable insulation?

Removable insulation is a type of insulation material that is designed and produced for frequent installation and removal. This can be in a form of removable insulation pads or removable insulation jackets with hooks or velcro straps. These types of fasteners allow for easy and quick installation and removal.

What is the main use of insulation mattresses?

Insulation mattresses are mainly used in applications where frequent maintenance is required. For example these insulation mattress can be used on valves in power plants or in breweries. Maintenance teams need to inspect the valves quite often and in order to access it they need to remove valve insulation. If you use stone wool insulation with metal sheet cladding it may be difficult to remove for a non-qualified operative. Once removed, the insulation needs to be protected from damage. Insulation mattresses

What’s the cost of insulation mattresses?

It all depends on your project and your needs. There are several factors which drive the cost of insulation mattress. The main price aspects are:
– surface
– working temperature
– number of insulation layers and overall thickness
– size and dimensions
– type of coating applied on the external surface
– working environment and ambient temperature conditions

An insulation mattress for a small ball valve (DN25) will costs less than another one for a large valve (DN300). It is also important to know the environment in which the removable insulation jackets will work. If the temperature of insulated medium for a removable insulation is 70°C ( 158°F) it will cost less than another one where the working temperature is 300°C (572°F) .

Which items can be insulated with removable insulation jackets?

It is up to the investor and maintenance team to decide which items they want to insulate with removable jackets. These items may be valves, flanges, compensators, pipes, ducts, vessels, tanks, heat exchangers, scrubbers, filters, exhaust pipes or ducts and even boiler walls or boiler hatches.

What’s the temperature range for removable insulation covers?

Removable insulation pads are suitable for cold insulation and high temperature insulation as well. With a suitable design insulation mattresses can be used on refrigeration plants with negative temperatures and also on power plant boilers or high pressure steam turbines or valves with temperatures reaching over 600°C.

4 Responses

  1. Can you please provide additional information on your insulation blankets, particularly application in external high UV areas.

    1. David, thank you for getting in touch with us. It all depends on the external conditions. Are there any other factors to consider when choosing the right material? What’s the external area? Land or marine surroundings? What’s the ambient temperature? Does it have to be spillage resistant as well? Once we know a bit more we can suggest what type of external material is most suitable.

  2. Pingback: Case study - valve insulation jackets on our industrial project in the UK - Removable Insulation Mattresses and Covers
  3. Pingback: Nuclear plant insulation

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