Some of these materials are presented in Table 4. It was apparent from 

 this survey that there is much duplication of the types of material 

 being utilized. By far the most popular material is a PVC coating over 

 nylon. In addition to the boom manufacturers a number of suppliers of 

 coated fabrics were contacted and consideration was also given to materials 

 manufactured primarily for use as pond and reservoir liners. Certain of 

 these materials are included in Table 4. 



In the course of gathering information on specific boom materials 

 it became evident that a comparison of materials on a property by property 

 basis and a realistic evaluation of them in terms of the weighted require- 

 ments developed in Section 2 would not be possible. Although for most 

 of the requirements listed in Section 2, standard tests exist, there are 

 a few for which no standard tests are defined, thus preventing an evalua- 

 tion of materials in terms of these requirements. Even for those require- 

 ments for which standard tests exist, a comparison of material on this 

 basis is restricted by the fact that many materials have not been subj ected 

 to the tests, or if they have, the procedures or conditions under which 

 the tests were run were not standard, but varied between material types 

 and manufacturer. Consequently, much of the quantitative data needed to 

 complete an evaluation are missing. The only positive way of comparing 

 candidate boom material in terms of the weighted requirements is to 

 develop the missing data through actual testing. Therefore, no numerical 

 rating of boom materials has been attempted. Instead, listed in Table 4 

 are the measured values for the important properties of the individual 

 materials as determined by the manufacturer or supplier and only a 

 qualitative comparison is presented [23-30]. 



All of the requirements for containment boom materials defined in 

 Section 2 are represented in Table 4 with the exception of flexibility, 

 repairability, and cleanability. 



As indicated in Section 2, the amount of flexibility required in a 

 material is dependent on boom design and no quantitative values for 

 acceptable flexibility have been established. While all the materials 

 listed in Table 4 can be described as flexible, no test data were provided 

 in the literature available from the manufacturers or suppliers to 

 permit comparison. This property was therefore excluded from Table 4. 



The cleanability of a material must be based on- its ability to 

 resist degradation from hot water, industrial strength detergents, and 

 solvents that dissolve crude and refined oil products. Polyurethane and 

 nitrile rubber can be severely affected by exposure to steam or hot 

 water at 212°F, although they are unaffected by water at lower tempera- 

 tures. Although no test data were available, it is doubtful that any of 

 the coated fabrics would be significantly affected by exposure to most • 

 detergents. When booms are contaminated with heavy deposits of weathered 

 oil they are sometimes washed with kerosene prior to cleaning with a 

 detergent. All the materials listed in Table 4 are degraded to some 

 extent by exposure to kerosene. 



20 



