Skellefteå harbor is being expanded!
New ground surfaces are being created in the sea for increasing the harbor area for higher capacity and for being able to receive more and larger vessels. The dredging of the bottom is an important factor since the vessels nowadays becomes larger and needs a larger depth. A 250 meter long new pier for the vessels will be built together with three hectares of new land for storage. The dredging masses are re-used again and all contaminated masses will be incapsulated and reused for expanding the land.
To increase the land, barriers are built in the sea by rocks, stones, dredging masses and other type of soils to create two basins, separated by a middle barrier. The slopes of the barriers and the bottom is covered with SealEco´s EPDM membrane to achieve a waterproof barrier. The EPDM membrane plays an important role to prevent leaching of heavy metals from the iron sand and dredging masses, which are used as filling material. The EPDM membrane is soft, flexible and has viscoelastic properties, which means that the product can withstand an almost unlimited loading. At low loads the elastic properties are dominating and at high loads the viscose properties dominate. The material can be deformed to extreme limits and still return to its original size and shape. EPDM rubber is sealing under pressure, even if substrates are rough, which make it to the best choice in this project, especially since hot-air welding of seams is not an option below water level. SealEco is the only manufacturer and supplier of EPDM membranes that offers prefabrication of large panels in a variety of sizes, tailor-made according to customers request from 300-1.500 m². Among other things, this was an important factor that sealed the deal in SealEco’ s favor, when decision for waterproofing was taken. Large tailor-made panels made handling and logistic much easier and reduction of seams on site were minimized, which quality assured the entire project.
Total surface is 41.080 m² supplied in 60 panels with different widths between 8-21 meter and lengths between 30-130 meter, folded and wrapped on iron tubes according to customers request.
