What Do You Know About Vermiculite Fireproofing

The first priority of civil industry is to safeguard the constructional steel in the incident of fire. The cementitious non-resistant fire protection coating that is applied to the constructional steel members through spray or trowel application is vermiculite. The best part is that it does not react, expand or form to impart it's fire protection properties. The internal and semi-exposed elements that are mainly of steel structures, concrete slab steel plate extension and hollow-core slabs are often fireproofed by using vermiculitefireproofing spray.

For fireproofing, the chemical that has to be chosen should be fire resistance as it required for the building and also make sure that no toxic or hazardous fumes are released during the period of fire and there must be no health hazards during or after the application of this chemical on the constructional steel.

What is vermiculite?

When hydrous phyllo silicate mineral is heated, it experiences certain expansion that is called vermiculite. A coating of monolithic is generally used with the mixture of vermiculite and cement to resist the fire. The low density and high durability makes it more preferable and it also minimizes the extra dead load to the structure. For the proper bondage in between, a top coating is applied to the structural element before the vermiculite spray application.

Properties of vermiculite:

In normal state, it is shiny and flat. The basic two important properties of vermiculite makes it worthy for thermal insulation. Vermiculite get expanded when heated at a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius and does not burn. Furthermore, it is also very light in weight when compared to others that makes it most acceptable for thermal insulation. Additionally, its fireproof and versatile properties provide enough flexibility to engineers and architects to use it on variety of bases.The best of all is that it is non combustible and insoluble in water and other organic solvents.

Below mentioned is the complete details of vermiculite spray:

It is white off in color, it's initial set range is 2 to 6 hours at 20 degrees Celsius and 50% RH. The density of vermiculite spray is 400km/m3 and comprehensive strength is 560kPa. Further the thermal conductivity is 0.0095W/mK at 20C and the pH value range is 12.0 to 12.5.

The thickness of vermiculite spray that is required at the time of application should be only calculated at the site depending upon the structural member sizes and the fire rating that would be required as per the manufacturer guidelines. The thickness of the application with a needle penetration gauge is mentioned below.

Structure of vermiculite

The structure of mica and talc is similar to that of vermiculite. It has two portions of tetrahedral layers and one portion of octahedral layer ie. 2:1. The tetrahedral layer has two layers of silica and alumina tetrahedral in it and the octahedral layer has apical oxygen atoms and magnesium, iron and hydroxyl particles in it. However these both layers are joined with each other. The production of ceramic and glass fibre products like ceramic fiber ropes, ceramic fiber cloth, etc. are made up of with the coating of vermiculite spray.