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Interep Inc.

  • Home
  • Projects
  • Products
  • About Us
  • Field Service, Engineering, & Inspections
  • Request a Quote
    • Metal Expansion Joints
    • Fabric Expansion Joints
    • Rubber Expansion Joints
    • Dampers
    • Corrosion Engineering
  • Contact Us
  • Associations
  • Need Representation?

Projects

Performance and longevity of an expansion joint (EJ) are affected by storage & environmental conditions. While most forms of environmental attack will have little effect upon a typical EJ while in storage, they are susceptible to accidental damage and storage best-practices must be followed in order to avoid plant-process issues after installation. Contact us for a storage guide, link in bio! #expansionjoints #industrialplants #industrialparts
Does your brickwork have expansion joints in it? Often, they’re made of Viton Rubber, which can handle acid well, but if you wash your acid down with water, you create hot acid due to the exothermic reaction the two substances produce, no rubber expansion joint can handle hot acid. Have INTEREP come out if you’ve had an upset event in your acid area recently, we’ll help you make sure your flooring expansion joints are holding up well, and help you avoid needed to do structural concrete repair work beneath your brick pad.
No drawings? No problem. Need a part for your plant, but its custom engineered and the drawings are nowhere to be found? INTEREP will show up and reverse engineer your expansion joints, dampers, or fans. Yet another reason to keep INTEREP on speed dial!
Finishing up a Dynawave scrubber inlet liner that we built out of FRP with a dual-laminate layer of ECTFE inside. This process sees hot gas, fluorides, and sulfur, so it eats pretty much any alloy out there. We needed to get something in there that could handle abrasives and still see temperatures around 300F from time to time. Next step is to get on-site and make sure that the Dynawave quenching weir is working properly so we don't get any hot spots
Check out this turbine crossover metal bellows refurbishment!
In the dry climate of the Rocky Mountains you really only get a rust bloom like this on your carbon steel when it sees direct contact with water (this new piece of ductwork just saw the first of many rainstorms in its life). However, in humid climates you’ll get this same rust inside of your vessels that aren’t even exposed to rain. That’s why it’s important to put down a coat of primer such as Pennguard HB, Penntrowel Epoxy Primer, or other similar ErgonArmor products as soon as possible after you’ve cleaned and prepped your surface. That’ll ensure you seal it in and are ready for a solid bond between your steel and your vessel lining system.
We've been supplying industrial process equipment around the world since 1983. We believe in delivering the highest quality hardware to keep an American industry up and running. Process knowledge is our passion. Most vendors understand their products, but we understand your process and how our products will interact with it. We're here to help you avoid downtime when downtime isn’t an option. INTEREP was created out of the ashes of the 1980’s oil bust. Our founder, Carl Horecky, swore he’d never put all his eggs in one basket again. From there, INTEREP was born and forged a path to become not only suppliers, but experts. In 2021, we're excited to continue growing our team of professionals who live for the unique challenges and solutions of unforgiving environments. We’d love to hear from you! Bring us your piping or ducting design challenge today and let us show you why so many industrial facilities trust INTEREP as the experts.
A customer reached out to us with a dilemma. They had a whole duct full of fabric expansion joints that were burning up, and they needed all new ones in less than 4 weeks. What’s weird is the flue gas is normally only 300F. However, they sometimes bypass 1000F gas into it and ALL of the gas that goes through this duct is high in sulfur. Instead of providing a new expansion joint with more insulation, we decided to calculate the minimum allowable amount of insulation based on their excursion durations and temperatures, put in all stainless flow-liners, hardware, and frames, and topped it off with silicone gaskets to help get the PTFE belt as watertight (or acid tight) as we could. Over-insulating the internal cavity pillow would cause sulfuric acid condensation inside the expansion joint (between the belt and pillow). Is it going to build up acid on cold days still? Probably. Is it going to keep the plant up and running without leaving gaping holes in their ductwork? Definitely.
Here's a picture from today when our trained field service technicians (Liam Burns and Andrew Dixon) were able to bring a coal fired power generating station back online after one of their pulverizer outlet expansion joints had a critical failure.
Safety Tip! If you see rust or discoloration on the outside of your vent silencer, check the inside. The perforated plate on this one came loose and it began shedding its internal insulation - causing safety and noise issues.
Sometimes you’ve just gotta suit up and get dirty to get plant back online. Here’s our founder, Carl Horecky, field-fitting a high temperature expansion joint belt onto the primary air duct coming off of a coal mill. Once he finishes, a whole coal-fired unit will be back up and running.
When somebody decides to replace a failed expansion joint with an unlike expansion joint laying in the boneyard, things will eventually go wrong. INTEREP was able to right this wrong by redesigning a new metal bellows and spring support to allow for many more years of worry-free operation. Call us if you're ever in a sticky situation - we'll bail you out.
An oil refinery had blown out their bellows by hydro testing their sulfur unit at pressures that exceeded what the system was designed to handle. INTEREP upgraded the poorly designed expansion joint to a much sturdier, lasting design, and this was the end result. INTEREP designs for longevity and serviceability. Give us a call and we'll deliver Peace of Mind to your operations.
Installing Expansion joints against pipe with stub ends and metal rings that back up against our rubber flange causes problems with sealing. The best system with pipe like this is to add an HDPE Flange Ring that lays against the stub end and then attach the rubber flange to the full face HDPE flange.
This reverse air baghouse expansion joint was made of EPDM operating at above 400F, the EPDM got brittle and ended up adhering itself to the duct and cracking across the bottom - filling the penthouse with SO2 gas. Our team retrofitted the expansion joint with one made of PTFE (Teflon) that could handle the temperature. Reverse air ducts can be hard on equipment because they switch from positive to negative pressure, so you want an expansion joint belt with no excess width in it, or it will get sucked into the duct during pressure changes and wear the edges of the belt out.
These Vogt-Nem OEM Penetration Seal Expansion Joints we’re exposed to a temperature excursion beyond their intended max when the false floor in the HRSG collapsed. You can see that the metal has started to anneal, which means it could fail at that point and cause a safety hazard. This is a good application for INTEREP’s Interflex bellows insulation system, which will allow the unit to run until the next outage with no safety concerns if a failure should occur.
These guys just finished installing 60 penetration seals (a full Alstom HRSG) which replaced the OEM “Korema Kompensatorenwerk” silicone & fiberglass expansion joints. All of the welded flange-studs on the front module (HPSH) had corroded and rusted, many had broken off. It was a gnarly job crawling around beneath the structural steel and welding them back together, but Steam Generation Corp was up to the task, and they’ve got the bruises to show it!
We reverse-engineered this 6
We know you want to do your job right the first time so you can leave for the woods and have peace of mind while you’re away. INTEREP is here to help make that happen. Call us and we’ll do the detail work for you.
Proco Products Tied Universal Expansion Joint with a centerspool of FRP pipe. Got nasty chemicals in your application that steel just won’t take? Proco can match the FRP pipe in your system to provide superior corrosion resistance.
These Proco Products Penetration Seals were just installed in the chemical & sludge wet wells at a combined cycle power plant. They can be unchained, wrapped around the pipe, slid into place, and then expanded to create a watertight seal. Excellent for retrofit applications.
If you look closely at the restraining hardware (tie-rods) on these expansion joints, you’ll see there are no outboard nuts. That means these EJs are exerting their full pressure thrust upon the adjacent piping. Apparently the elbows below them are handling it well, as they’ve been installed for 15 years.
This universal expansion joint got put on the high pressure bleed air line of a gas turbine, deforming the metal bellows. It was made for the low pressure bleed air. Check with us first and we’ll help you avoid rush orders and emergency repairs.

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