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Navigating unexpected contaminants with your geomembrane system
March 5th, 2024
By Felon Wilson Geomembranes are long-term containment barriers. As such, it is not uncommon for them to be called upon to contain liquids not originally planned. That is particularly true in applications which are more likely to produce changing or varying liquid containment requirements. This blog series will dig into how unexpected contaminants can be […]
Geomembranes revolutionizing U.S. water industry: Tackling 2023 survey concerns
February 5th, 2024
By Felon Wilson XR-5 Geomembrane-lined, sunlight exposed sanitary sewer overflow impoundment in Alabama. Photo courtesy of Seaman Corporation. By coincidence, two independent surveys were recently released which identified key issues in the U.S. water industry. The reports are listed in Table 1. Table 1 While both reports address respondents’ perceptions of current and anticipated market […]
How geomembranes help improve water quality, lower costs and increase efficiencies in wastewater treatment – Part 4
December 20th, 2023
By Felon Wilson “While the environment is a very emotional and even moral issue for most of us, to be effective in the area, as one practitioner put it, you need a good engineer, not a poet.” - James W. Conrad, Counsel, American Chemistry Council In the final segment of our look at geomembrane uses in […]
How geomembranes help to improve water quality, lower costs and increase efficiencies in wastewater treatment – Part 3
December 11th, 2023
By Felon Wilson “Old ideas are being evaluated and new concepts are being formulated.” George Tchobanoglous, University of California Davis, in Wastewater Engineering: Treatment, Disposal and Reuse, 3rd Edition. In this post and the next, geomembrane use in wastewater management will be discussed. The wastewater management system will be broken into two parts: Wastewater Collection and […]
How geomembranes help to improve water quality, lower costs and increase efficiencies in wastewater treatment – Part 2
November 30th, 2023
“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” Jacques Yves Cousteau In Part 1: Wastewater Industry in North America,” a brief history of the efforts to deal with wastewater was explored along with estimates of the size of the industry itself. In this post, we will take a look at the current […]
The rise of BGMs: A decade of transformation in the geomembrane industry
November 13th, 2023
A decade ago, bituminous geomembranes (BGMs) were a relatively unknown player in the landfill and mining industries. Fast forward to the present day, and BGMs have emerged as a significant disruptor, posing a formidable challenge to traditional high-density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembrane manufacturers. The industry landscape has shifted dramatically, with BGMs steadily gaining market share and […]
How geomembranes help to improve water quality, lower costs and increase efficiencies in wastewater treatment
November 8th, 2023
By Felon Wilson Part 1: Wastewater Industry in North America “We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness, we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.”– […]
New developments in geomembranes for pit heat storage
October 9th, 2023
Large solar thermal systems need large heat storage capabilities. Especially if the solar heat is to contribute significantly more than 25 % to a district heating network. Pit thermal energy storage (PTES) is a cost-effective way to build large heat storage facilities with 100,000 m3 and more. A key component of these storage pits is the […]
Service life of exposed geosynthetics
October 1st, 2023
Q: Can we correlate laboratory versus outdoor weathering of geomembranes? I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter because we are getting technical challenges on this issue from regulators. A: Yes, we do this all the time. The results are location dependent based on ambient temperature and solar radiation. We have several papers on the […]
Lower trial weld strengths in polyethylene seams
October 1st, 2023
Polyethylene (PE) seaming techniques are used in the field to fabricate rolls of geomembranes into liner systems. There are two predominant methods used: hot wedge “fusion” welding and “extrusion” seaming. Over the past year, installers have noticed lower trial weld strength than in years past. This makes for much discussion on the jobsite between certified […]