TECHNOLOGY
W
The technology used for the M1 project was specifically developed for concrete
demolition, and imported from Europe and the US.
ater jetting is a rapidly growing
technology used in the industrial
cleaning and surface preparation
industries. Total Blasting is a member of the
Total Product Solutions group of companies
in the industrial cleaning as well as industrial
supplies and procurement sectors. It has over
30 years’ experience in the surface preparation
industry, particularly ultra-high-pressure (UHP)
water blasting services and solutions.
The company supplies a wide range of water-
jetting pumps (250–2 800 bar) and accessories
from Jetstream Pumps, Peinemann Equipment,
Stoneage Tools, and TST Waterjet Protection,
for any water-jetting application in a wide range
of industries, including steel mills, power
generation, construction, and mining.
“We’re not physically a contractor — we sell
and we rent equipment,” says Total Blasting
director, Bradley Storer. “However, having said
that, if something specialised comes along that
our client base is unable to do and we have the
resources, then we’ll do it. And the market we
cover is pretty broad-based, but also very much
in the industrial sector. We don’t just supply
products and services in South Africa, but
into Africa as well. We have actually supplied
systems up into Zambia, for example.”
Storer explains that water jetting can be
used in place of sandblasting, with very high
water pressure — 2 800 bar — being used to
strip any coating, contamination, or debris from
a steel substrate. “The obvious advantage of
using water jetting over sandblasting is that
it is environmentally friendly. In many cases,
it is also a lot more efficient, in terms of both
productivity and resource utilisation.
“But the big driver is disposal costs,” he
adds. “The problem with sandblasting is that
once you’ve used the abrasive — the sand
— it becomes contaminated with something,
whether it be a contaminant or a coating
from a steel substrate, and it is then deemed
hazardous waste. So, you might pay R600 for
a tonne of abrasive, but disposing of that same
tonne after use could cost you nearly R2 000
per tonne, because it has to go to a hazardous
landfill site and so on. So, while the cost per
square metre for sandblasting is lower than
water blasting, in many instances the total cost
per square metre of water blasting comes out a
lot cheaper than sandblasting, purely because of
the handling, disposal, and so on.”
And while the water is also contaminated by
whatever has been cleaned and needs to be
disposed of, the advantage is that the water
evaporates, so instead of needing to dispose
of a tonne of paint-contaminated sand, there
might only be 200kg of paint after water jetting.
JANUARY 2018
19