Schupan recycling plant, Detroit MI

Every unrinsed can that goes through a recycling compactor leaks a little acidic syrup. Multiply by thousands of cans a week for years, and at this plant outside Detroit the concrete 15 to 20 feet around every compactor was dissolving: 20% of the surface cap gone, 10% of the aggregate under it exposed and eroding.

The constraint was the calendar. The plant manager had one narrow shutdown window for the entire job: contamination removal, surface rebuild, coating, and cure.

The fix. Inside that window, a partner crew cut out the contaminated cap, rebuilt the lost surface with epoxy mortar, and coated the compactor zones with an acid-resistant novolac epoxy system built for exactly this chemistry.

The result: machines back on schedule, on a floor the acid sits on instead of eats.