Attila Marta (REE Director | Principal Engineer | Geosynthetics SME) recently attended the second International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) GeoBarriers workshop in Barcelona, Spain.
Following the very successful inaugural event held June 2018 in Munich, Germany it was time to dust off the passport and hang out with Professors, consultants, manufacturers, and other industry representatives. Once again it was skilfully run, directly attributable to the format where presentations are kept to 15 minutes with 45 minutes allowed for discussion periods. This allowed respectful and lively discussions where valuable insights and experiences were shared from all corners of the globe.
Key learnings and discussion points included:
- Strains in geomembranes particularly how they’re calculated.
- Impacts of weld squeeze-out on long term durability related to increased Std-OIT depletion or lower HP-OIT residual values.
- GCLs and more specifically polymer modified variants.
- Multicomponent GCLs.
- PFAS, PFOS, AFFF, etc… one of the greatest challenges for engineers, scientists, regulators, governments, multi-national companies, etc.
- The very clear message regarding environmental protection from PFAS (and similar substances) is that currently there are no geomembranes (or other geosynthetics) capable of providing long-term containment.
- Geomembrane durability requires understanding Std-OIT, HP-OIT, AO packages, resins etc….while not a revelation there are always twists and turns along this complex path.
- For buried geomembranes, Std-OIT is more important than HP-OIT (all things being equal).
The workshop concluded with positive energy with all looking forward to the next GeoBarriers Workshop. As per the usual custom, a photo with Professor Kerry Rowe was added to Attila’s collection.
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