CTB Holland BV started building up a great variety of surface techniques already in 1982. Now in 2008 these range from various surface (pre)treatments like blasting with various grits as steel, ceramic particles, glass beads (shotpeening) to application techniques for a variety of coatings (metallic, paints and powdercoatings).  Moreover CTB provides expert services with some special techniques like Microcleanen, Micropeenen and TSA.

We are engaged in damage prevention in new installations and equipment for the process industry and we are called in for maintenance projects on site. Our surface treatments prevent adhesion of products to reactor surfaces and in general prevent fouling of installations, resulting in higher throughput and quality of producys. Corrosion damage (underdeposit, pitting) can be avoided. By application of the proper surface treatment inspection is simplified and the operating period of the equiment is increased, which results in large cost reductions. Two of these techniques, shotpeening and especially the “Micropeen®-treatment” reduce the sensitivity to stress corrosion cracking considerably, safeguarding the installations.

All together  the surface treatments of CTB Holland BV result in an increased life time of used metals and ultimately in a contribution to a sustainable future for our customers at low costs and with a short pay-back time of 1-2 years.

The contribution of CTB is the value chain

Design of installations, choices of materials and joining techniques, have a lot in common. There is also a strong link with safety and production reliability. It is not so strange that a seemingly simple process as shotpeening can be of determining influence on a safe and predictable functioning of welded tubes and vessels, knowing that welding results in tensile stresses: Shotpeening results in compressive stresses in the outer surface layer.
Professional behaviour and huge practical experience position CTB Holland BV in the chain of information exchange and thus its position in the materials related value chain.

Often CTB Holland BV is the last step in the materials chain. Surface treatments are often executed during a shut down for maintenance, just before  the installations are started up again: that is quite a special position. New equipment is also often installed during shutdown periods of existing installations, which makes intense information exchange a must in order to result in a flexible yet efficient planning of the surface treatment in the workshop or on site.  Sometimes early information exchange takes place during the design stage of the equipment, taking into account process conditions and product behaviour in a reactor vessel, in order to optimize the choice of surface treatment enabling shorter shutdown periods in the future and elongation of the maintenance free periods.

During visual inspection of the surface, often only possible after a thorough cleaning procedure (eg Microcleaning®), quite unexpectedly local damage like pits and microcracks can be found; these defects can in most cases be repaired by the maintenance people just before CTB Holland BV applies one of the surface treatments. In some cases the damage can be severe, especially in welding zones. A penetrant liquid is used in those case to provide a good survey of the defects.

CTB Holland BV supports customers in all their maintenance of old and new process equipment. The Dutch market for industrial maintenance is estimated to be 10 billion €.  Well chosen and executed surface treatments may reduce these costs.

CTB Holland BV is one of the first surface treatments companies on site. We were certified from the early days of our company. Next to many smaller companies we have Shell, ExxonMobil, Thyssen krupp, Corus Ijmuiden and Dupont as our customers.