Dramatically faster turnaround than abrasive blasting
Clean, safe removal in an enclosed workshop environment
The Eurotunnel project involved the removal of an epoxy adhesive floor coating from the steel floors of railway wagons used to transport trucks through the Channel Tunnel. The work was carried out at the Euro Tunnel workshop in Coquelles, France, by PROMETA PR, an RPR 1650 operator, under a 3-year maintenance contract with Euro Tunnel.
The railway wagons were originally fitted with wooden floors bonded to the steel substrate using the Nuansol epoxy adhesive system. Heavy truck traffic through the tunnel was wearing down the timber flooring far too quickly, leading Euro Tunnel to replace the wooden floors with steel sheets. Before the new steel flooring could be installed, the residual Nuansol epoxy adhesive coating, ranging from 2 to 4mm in thickness, needed to be fully removed from the 8mm thick steel floor panels of each wagon.
The contract required PROMETA PR to process 4 wagons every 3 to 4 weeks across a 3-year period, making throughput speed and operational consistency critical to the viability of the programme. Initial trials using sand blasting had proven the method to be entirely inadequate for this application, taking 4 full days to complete a single wagon while generating significant waste and creating an unacceptable working environment inside the workshop. A faster, cleaner, and more operator-friendly solution was needed to make the contract practical and sustainable.
Removing the Nuansol epoxy adhesive system from the steel floor panels of Eurotunnel’s railway wagons presented a challenge that immediately exposed the limitations of conventional abrasive removal methods. The Nuansol coating, applied at 2 to 4mm thickness directly onto 8mm steel sheets, had been specifically formulated to bond wooden flooring securely to the wagon floor under heavy and repeated loading from truck traffic. Its adhesive properties made it highly resistant to standard removal techniques.
PROMETA PR’s first attempt at stripping the coating used sand blasting, which took 4 full days to complete a single wagon. At that rate, processing 4 wagons every 3 to 4 weeks under the Euro Tunnel maintenance contract would have been completely impractical. Beyond the time issue, abrasive blasting inside a workshop environment generates enormous volumes of spent grit and airborne dust, creates significant health and safety concerns for operators, and leaves the workshop in a heavily contaminated state that requires extensive clean-up between jobs.
The requirement was clear: full removal of the Nuansol epoxy adhesive to a standard that would allow a new coating to be applied directly over the cleaned steel surface, while preserving as much of the original surface roughness as possible to assist with the adhesion of the new system. The solution needed to be fast enough to meet the contract schedule, clean enough to work in an enclosed workshop setting, and safe enough to protect the operators carrying out the work on a regular, ongoing basis.
PROMETA PR deployed the RPR 1650 Generator with a combination of 10cm and 20cm flat induction heads, an extension trolley, and a pneumatic scraper to carry out the floor stripping works. A team of two operators worked across each wagon floor, with the induction system thermally disbonding the Nuansol epoxy adhesive from the steel substrate without any abrasive media, chemicals, or water.
The RPR induction process generates localised heat within the adhesive layer, breaking the bond between the coating and the steel substrate so that it can be lifted cleanly as solid flakes. The pneumatic scraper was used in conjunction with the induction head to remove the disbonded material efficiently as operators progressed along the wagon floor. The extension trolley allowed the induction head to reach across the full width of the floor panels without operators needing to reposition constantly, contributing to the speed and consistency of the removal process.
The results were transformative. A job that had taken 4 full days using sand blasting was completed in just 4.5 hours using the RPR 1650 system, a reduction in stripping time of more than 90%. Critically, much of the original surface roughness of the steel floor panels was preserved after RPR stripping, meaning the surface was in suitable condition for direct recoating with minimal additional preparation required.
The waste generated by the RPR process consisted solely of the removed coating flakes, a fraction of the waste volumes associated with abrasive blasting. The workshop environment remained clean and safe throughout, with no airborne grit or dust contamination affecting operators or the surrounding facility. The RPR technique proved entirely suited to the demands of the Eurotunnel maintenance contract, providing a reliable, repeatable, and high-throughput solution for the ongoing wagon floor refurbishment programme.
