I am in the beginning of an ominous task, sound proofing parts of an industrial facility. Lots of tanks, pumps, pipes, and things you can't just wrap with sound deadening boards. I have seen a few of these coatings/paints that appear to have "insulating ceramic microspheres" or "vacuum beads". They look like they could be neato but I can't find any numbers that say what the estimated dB reduction is. Does anybody have any experience with this or ideas and things I should be looking at?

Thanks,
Rob

Rob

I am going to say I have just enough experience with sound deadening / dampening to be extremely dangerous.

I think a lot depends on if you are trying to deaden at the source ie the machine - which makes a lot of sense at first look.
COLD WATER I have never seen this done for noiss - heat yes.

What I ahve seen done was put a wall around a sheet metal shop to reduce teh noise from teh shear. worked well. Another frequent option is to place machine in a separate room (or build room around it - commonly done for sawmill planers. Standard 2 x 4 with doubled sheetrock was common.

Another option is to spread the machines furter apart.

As far as paint on onto the machines I have never seen anything. I would want to see good independent lab evaluation and a site visit from maker prior to purchase to ensure you are not buying a pig in a poke.

Dan Bentler

While I have even less experience than Dan when it comes to sound prooffing, I have seen guards with undercoating sprayed on the inside of them to deadened sound. What type of reduction are you looking for? What type of equipment are you sound proofing?

Well I just typed a long response with more info, direction that i am going to try first and for some reason it logged me out and wouldn't let me post it, then it was gone. Was a real masterpiece too. Since it is Friday and I have been at work since 2 am, I give up and I will be back Monday to continue. But this is what I am looking at http://www.mascoat.com/db.php
Later,
Rob

I forgot about automotive sound deadening which is what this stuff looks like. I liked their bell test and would have a couple questions - what kind of sound level meter and what scale did they use. In my opinion they should have used a meter that meets NIOSH criteria and used the A scale and reported readings in dBA. Another way and that may be better is use an octave band analyzer such as those used to check audiometric testing booths.

I would talk with the factory about using this on machinery. It may be more appropriate for walls floors etc.

Dan Bentler
Other than those thoughts the stuff looks pretty good.

Well to start with I plan on trying this on a air pressure tank that produces measured dB of 95-98 while recharging. Its an easy application to try. Hopefully I can get it approved today and try it soon.
Rob

Sounds good, but what exactly is the noise reduction about? I'm used to heavy industry and high dBs, but usually it just means hearing protection is required. I'm curious why the investment in noise reduction?

QUOTE:
but what exactly is the noise reduction about?

Well in this plant there is only a few places where we are loud enough to require ear protection and most have been isolated in "sound rooms". Entering the room requires e-pro. There are a few spots where we think that it is starting to get up there and we would like to keep the building free of ear protection requirements. I get to find and eliminate the loud spots. Like I said 95% of our building is less than 75-80 dB.
Rob

Kinda funny, right after I made the last post I saw the add for free ear plugs.

robh wrote:

QUOTE:
Well to start with I plan on trying this on a air pressure tank
Rob

robh,

Does your pressure vessel tester/permit guy use a ultrasonic thickness tester? If he does you may need to leave an area exposed, free from insulation.

The first approach of Safety or Industrial Hygiene is to control at the source. You are one of very few if not the first to actually try this so you just might be making history.

IF your compressor and motor are mounted to the tank or on a common structure you may consider using sound isolation mounts on compressor / motor to isolate their noise being transmitted to the tank. The tank acts like a drum and maybe amplifying due to high surface area.

Keep us posted as you work on this. I am most interested in your findings.

Dan Bentler

QUOTE:
IF your compressor and motor are mounted to the tank or on a common structure you may consider using sound isolation mounts on compressor / motor to isolate their noise being transmitted to the tank.

Our compressor is hid away in one of our "sound rooms". this tank is fed from a 1/2" air line fed from a 2" pipe fed from the compressor.

QUOTE:
The tank acts like a drum and maybe amplifying due to high surface area.

Hollow surface area too. I have been side tracked for the last couple of days with electrical problems so I hope to get back to this Friday.

Still moving forward with this. We just changed (still discussing amongst ourselves) exactly how, what, when and where we will be setting up and taking base line dB readings. Once we get most of that data collected and look it over we will be moving on to eliminating or reducing the sound/noise levels. Tedious data collection...my favorite. Will update as interesting things develop and also if we use that coating and how it works.

Update

We had a rep come in and demonstrate the sound reduction coating in a small spot. No real change expected till we can clean the entire tank and coat at least 70% of the surface area. Looks like it should work. I am not sure if it is as glorious as I had first thought, but still looks good.

The temperature "insulating" paint looks like some neat stuff. He brought us a sample of that as well. From the little of it I have seen I would suggest to anyone needing a heat barrier to look into it. The products are about $60 a gallon. Could get a little spendy but if you are talking about reducing heat loss the pay back could be fast. Hopefully here soon I will be able to test both of these products and have some actual data.

Rob

Well both of the coatings are still sitting in the shop . My priorities have been "readjusted" lately. Bigger projects to play with. Still haven't been able to get all the testing done on either the sound or the temperature. Most of the sound testing has been coming back as adequate for what we want. Enough so that we may not be using the sound reduction coating at all. I believe we have scheduled an industrial hygienist to come in sometime this summer to give us an official documented tests confirming this. I am however, still very interested in using the thermal stuff.

Rob

Interesting in that project am working on is evaluating a paint type product that is supposed to be good thermal and noise "insulator" ie claimed 68 dB sound reduction (???) not sure about the number and how they made the measurement but we are mostly interested in the heat transfer and insulation capabilities.

Stuff is ceramic based sold by outfit in Texas. Am willing to share data (subject to it's being Top Secret blah blah blah)

Let me know the stuff you have please.
Dan Bentler

The product that I was looking at comes from Mascoat and its called Delta~dB. When I talked to our rep the claims he presented were 10-15 dB reduction. That was with a 40 mil coating, best case. 10-15 dB is a fairly considerable amount. Were the numbers you got maybe meaning reduced by 6-8 dB or to 68%? Most of the applications this is used in are insulating the inner hulls of boats and ships. They have some case studies on their web site http://www.mascoat.com/index.php
I believe they are based out of Texas.

They also offer a thermal insulation called Delta T Industrial Thermal Insulating Coating. I was impressed with this stuff. The demo he showed us was a hot plate that you couldn't get your hand near, then a 1/4" or 3/8" plate coated in this stuff sitting on the hot plate for 10-15 min. You cold hold your hand on the plate. He also provided me with some third party lab testing results. I have a sample of this and can't wait to do some testing of my own.

Later,
Rob