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Welcome to
www.pplfieldliners.com,
a website dedicated to providing
detailed information about the
capabilities and benefits of our
innovative ‘PPL Field Liner’, a
technologically advanced laminate
sleeve that is easily fitted over
the ‘butt end’ of a wood Utility Pole at
the point of setting and provides
lasting protection for the Utility
Pole and for the environment.
The PPL Field Liner
delivers significant
economic and
environmental benefits to the owners
of wood Utility Poles and to their
customers. The PPL Field Liner
prevents preservative leaching from
the Utility Pole into the soil
around it. This means that the
preservative continues to protect
the Utility Pole from its ground
contact environment and in
particular from fungal and insect
attack, thereby prolonging the life
of the pole. Environmentally, the
fact that preservatives are not
leaching into the soil means that PPL Field
Liners protect the environment from
the Utility Pole and the
preservatives that it is treated
with. The PPL Field Liner also
protects the Utility Pole from
subterranean termite attack and in
particular, the activities of the
Formosan termite which is causing
huge damage in many southern states
of the USA.
Within our website we
will seek to explain everything we
can about the efficacy of the PPL
Field Liner and why it is of such
crucial environmental and economic
relevance to the wood Utility Pole
and Electric Utility industries.
Protective
Packaging Ltd – Corporate Overview
The
PPL Field Liner is manufactured and
marketed by
Protective Packaging Ltd
of the UK, specialists in the
forming of climatic barrier
materials and solutions for nearly
twenty years.
Protective Packaging Ltd
is represented around the world and
supplies a blue chip customer base
across a wide range of industries.
The company is
accredited to ISO 9001 2000 level
and has been accredited to
ISO
standards since 1990. Our corporate
website,
www.protpack.com,
provides comprehensive information
about our company, our history, our
manufacturing capabilities and our
customer philosophy.
In 2006
Protective Packing Ltd were winners
of the Alufoil Trophy, awarded for
"Champions Of Innovation" by the
European
Aluminium Foil Association,
for the PPL Field Liner.
The independent judging panel
considered the PPL Field Liner to be
one of the top five most innovative
applications of aluminium foil
throughout the European industry.
A copy of the
"Infoil Awards" announcement can be
downloaded here.
Biotrans
– Microbiological Biotransformations
of Wood
Protective Packaging
Ltd has the exclusive manufacturing
and marketing rights for the PPL
Field Liner, the patented invention
of
Professor
Albin A W Baecker,
a world respected wood
micro-biologist.
Testing of the
invention started in the early
1990s and forerunner versions of
the PPL Field Liner product have
been
implemented in the USA and
in Africa.
Biotrans holds
international
Patents
for the PPL Field Liner invention
and applications have included
vineyard posts as well as Utility
Poles. You can find out more through
Professor
Baecker's Bibliography, his
Published Works
and our
Development
Milestones review.
PPL
– Preventing Preservatives Leaching
and Prolonging Pole Life
In the USA alone,
there are estimated to be in excess
of 150 million pressure treated wood
Utility Poles in service today.
Worldwide, whilst alternative
materials such as Concrete, Steel
and Composites (Fibreglass) are used
for Utility Poles, most Utility
Poles are still made of wood.
As a general rule,
Utility Poles are ‘pressure treated’
with preservatives, either a full
length treatment or a ‘butt end’
treatment depending largely on the
species of wood used (more durable
woods are usually butt end treated
only to protect the wood in ground
contact). Preservatives extend the
life of Utility Poles by a factor of
5 -10 so their economic value is
obvious.
Pressure treatment
is a means by which preservatives
are forced into the wood so as to
achieve a depth of penetration and a
retention of preservative. Utility
Poles are pressure treated with
preservative in accordance with
specified standards, set in the USA
for example by the American Wood
Protection Association (AWPA). The
goal of pressure treatment is to
ensure a deep, uniform penetration
of preservative at reasonable cost
without endangering the environment
and standards have become more
stringent as to how ‘fixed’
preservatives are, thereby reducing
leaching.
However, the simple
fact is that
preservatives do leach out of
pressure treated Utility Poles and
many studies have proven this to be
the case. The impact of leaching is
that the preservative retention
levels within the wood Utility Pole
fall and as a consequence, the
protection against fungal and insect
attack reduces. Reduced protection
leads to greater decay and/or insect
activity which in turn leads to
premature Utility Pole failure. A
single Utility Pole failure can
bring down multiple poles in the
same line and these in turn cause
damage, outages and potentially loss
of life and property damage. A
recent case highlighted the
dangers of
Utility Pole decay to the health and
safety of Linemen and there are
well documented instances of single
Utility Pole failure causing
substantial damage as a result of
‘cascading’ of poles.
Quite aside from the
economic impacts of premature
Utility Pole failure due to
preservatives leaching are the
environmental consequences. A number of pressure groups
have sought to highlight the
environmental issues associated with
the use of preservatives in Utility
Poles and their analysis seeks to
highlight that whilst the leaching
of toxic preservative associated
with a single pole may be regarded
as insignificant by the Utility Pole
industry, with 150 million such
poles in service there is a
substantial environmental issue.
An ever increasing
threat to Utility Poles, especially
in the southern states of America,
is termite activity and in
particular the
Formosan termite, a
veracious invader from China that
has caused serious damage to wooden
structures including Utility Poles.
The preservatives with which Utility
Poles are treated generally have
both ‘biocidal’ and ‘insecticidal’
properties but of course, as
retention levels fall, the
effectiveness of preservatives falls
as well. The laminate material from
which PPL Field Liners are
constructed includes an insecticidal
layer that will repel termites and
other insects from trying to attack
the lined Utility Pole through the
liner itself. Hence, PPL Field
Liners prevent termite attack, a
major financial risk to utilities in
termite affected areas.
Installation
The PPL Field Liner
is quick and easy to fit at the
point of setting. Taking up very
little space on the Line Truck, the
Linemen simply pull the PPL Field
Liner sleve over the butt end of a
new Utility Pole immediately prior
to setting. The entire process takes
less than 2 minutes to provide
lifelong protection for the Utility
Pole.
The nearest
comparable systems on the market,
generally referred to as ‘Barrier
Wraps’, have to either be installed
at the pole yard or at the electric
utility’s store yard rather than at
the point of setting. Handling and
transportation inevitably
compromises the integrity of the
material used and also adds cost.
Economic & Environmental Benefits
The economic benefits of the PPL Field Liner
derive from extending the
serviceable life of new wooden
Utility Poles and from the reduction
in costly servicing and remedial
treatments during their lifetime.
This is because the PPL Field Liner
is an effective ‘Biotechnological
Device’ that will substantially
increase the lifespan of any Utility
Pole by protecting it from fungal
and insect attack far more
effectively than a preservative
treatment alone can achieve. The
addition of a PPL Field Liner to a
new wood Utility Pole is expected to
double the standard service life of
that pole. Furthermore, with
extended inspection cycles during
that period, the financial benefits
are clear and calculable.
The environmental
benefits of the PPL Field Liner are
equally clear. Preventing
preservatives leaching is an
immediate benefit to the environment
but also, by doubling the life of a
Utility Pole, there is a long term
and sustainable requirement for far
fewer replacement Utility Poles.
This leads to lower energy
consumption requirements, at all
stages of the life cycle of a
Utility Pole and to reduced waste
and pollution. The fundamentals of
the life cycle of a Utility Pole are
that it starts as a tree, this raw
material is then processed, the pole
itself is manufactured, it is then
set in place, it is serviced during
it’s lifetime and ultimately it is
removed and disposed of. Each and
every stage of this process consumes
energy and produces pollutant waste. With the
serviceable life of Utility Poles
potentially doubled, fewer wood
Utility Poles will be required and fewer waste Utility Poles
will need to be dealt with.
Summary
By the simple
addition of a PPL Field Liner to the
butt end of a wood Utility Pole before being set in the
ground, the Utility Pole will last
longer which is desirable in every
sense and in every way, ensuring that toxic
preservatives are not being released
into the environment.
It is not a case of
whether a utility company can afford
a PPL Field Liner but rather whether
the planet can afford for a wood
Utility Pole not to have one. |
