Stella-Jones introduces single-stage borate treatment process
Written by jrood
A two-stage borate treatment has been used for years to help increase the life of a crosstie. Stella-Jones recently developed a new single-stage treatment process that allows for less handling of the crossties and reduced costs.
The
new process was developed by Dr. Gordon Murray, vice president of Stella-Jones
and Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University. The single-stage process will replace the current cumbersome
and costly two-stage process, which involves treating crossties with borates,
allowing the borates time to diffuse, and then finally treating the crossties
with creosote.
Testing
of the borate diffusion began in August 2009 to AWPA specifications and has
since been independently validated. This analysis determined that Stella-Jones’
new single-stage borate treatment produces the same end result as the
traditional two-stage process.
Full
scale production testing is expected to begin in April 2010 at the company’s
Goshen, Va., facility serving CSX Transportation and a number of shortline
railroads.
CSXT
installs a limited number of borate-treated crossties in the heavy-decay zones
of the southeastern United States. Company officials visited the Stella-Jones research
facility in January, and CSXT plans to utilize the single-stage treated
crossties. This lower-cost alternative will be a factor in the number of
borate-treated crossties the company purchases, said CSXT officials.
