Rust Eats Infrastructure, Vehicles and Ships: What Can We Do About It?

One of my clients whose name is NanoRustX LLC makes a unique paint and primer. My company, Material Technologies, Inc. advises and represents them.

They are headquartered in Belleville, NJ and also have a factory there. They ship globally and the product is amazing. It is water based. It only requires a simple water wash to clean the surface. The surface can be painted while it is still wet. It chemically reacts with rust and completely eliminates it. It doesn’t just coat the rust.

Other popular rust treatments are oil based (with all of its drawbacks) and simply coat over the rust). They do not make it disappear.

 It contains no volatile organic material (VOC’s) so you can’t smell it. You don’t want that stuff in your lungs. High VOC coatings are being outlawed in many places.

If the coating is scratched or chipped, subsequent rust will not propagate.

Shown above is a ship hatch.

The product dries quickly. That is important because the highway dept doesn’t want sections of a roads or bridges closed any longer than needed. Cruise ships cost their operators $250,000 to $300,000 per day when sailing without passengers so when the ships go to dry dock the operators want fast turnaround. The Navy and Coast Guard wants their ships deployed, not sitting in the shipyard. Last summer, my crew and I painted the trailer of my sailboat with this product. Even an inexperienced painter like me was able to help get the job done.

The largest cost in painting is grit blasting to remove rust. These products eliminate the need for that, too. Shipyards and drydocks can be more competitive by eliminating grit blasting. A byproduct of grit blasting is fine dust loaded with nasty heavy metals which can be carcinogens. It, too, is being eliminated where possible.

NanoRustX is a small company so many customers want to use the primer with top coats they are familiar with. That is why NanoRustX has been and is testing compatibility of its primer with top coats made by other coating companies. Adhesion is critical. You don’t want paint peeling. These products have excellent adhesion. 

An obvious application for these products is in ships and usage is growing there. No matter how good a product, it requires testing to see how well it is applied, withstands the elements and adheres to the surface. The armed forces are particularly stringent. Our Navy ships operate in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf to the frigid Baltic. The Navy needs to be sure that coatings stand up under all conditions. Army and Marine Corps vehicles operate in desert type climates where they get sand blasted by high winds and sand, so coatings need to stand up to abrasion.

NanoPrimeX was successfully put on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Have you driven or looked under bridges lately particularly those which traverse salt water? You will be aghast at the degree of rust and holes in many of them. States are racing to replace them. NanoPrimeX can freeze the process so that the governments can catch up.

One of our clients recently needed to process a water tank and the vessel was scheduled to leave port soon. With NanoPrimeX, they were able to put an operator in that tank with no protective gear like masks

Since the product had no VOC’s, the job got done in time and was acceptable.

NanoPrimeX works on regular steel, galvanized steel, aluminum and concrete. It will paint over painted surfaces. It can be brushed, rolled or sprayed.

The coupon on the left shows rust and NanoPrimeX primer. The coupon on the right has the top coat applied.

In Marketing 101, we learn that unless there is a need you don’t have a business. Even our bipartisan government seem to agree that there is a need for 2 trillion dollars in infrastructure improvement over the next few years. A number of rusting bridges, tunnels, rail, switch gear, canal and waterway locks, towers, storage tanks and others are going to fail unless this need is addressed.

This product is sold globally. The company would like to engage additional distributors. If you would like more information, see www.NanoRustX.com or call me at 732-542-5800. I can also be reached through LinkedIn or at [email protected]. I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

I think it is amazing product.

What do you think?

Ira Friedman