Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) manages the sixth-largest wastewater treatment plant in the U.S., processing up to 350 million gallons per day (MGD) at peak flow. To restore the degraded condition of the facility’s clarifiers, PVSC administered a test program to evaluate the performance of concrete repair and coating alternatives. Five protective coatings were subjected to intensive, side-by-side testing for periods up to eight to twelve months to test for delamination in multicoat systems, pinholes, holidays, and adhesion in an active setting.

Three of the participating manufacturers scored the minimum ranking of eight on a scale of ten. With one manufacturer pulled from the study, two coatings in total were approved and specified. Of the two specified, one product scored the highest possible rank—the only product that could be applied without a resurfacing material and could be sprayed up to 500 mils in a single coat. Applied to PVSC’s infrastructure, the quick cure epoxy offered structural enhancement and long-term protection to prevent concrete degradation. This project emphasizes the importance of testing coatings under live field conditions to better understand their long-term performance instead of solely relying on a product’s technical data sheet (TDS) that only reflects laboratory testing.

Key words: spray coating, concrete, coating testing, corrosion control, deterioration, epoxy coatings, wastewater rehabilitation, value engineering, pilot study testing, technical data sheets.