12 August 2025

Preventing corrosion with STOPAQ. A Q&A on everything you wanted to know.

In this STOPAQ podcast series, Dinko Cudic, Business Line Director at Henkel tackles the most asked questions about their visco-elastic technology STOPAQ.

The second episode covers the topic of being purpose designed: what does superior adhesion to various substrates mean? 

Listen to the STOPAQ podcast here:

Or you can read the transcript below:

Preventing corrosion with STOPAQ.
A Q&A on everything you wanted to know.

Hi, everyone. My name is Dinko Cudic, and I’m the business line director of our viscoelastic technologies, and today we’ll be answering questions on STOPAQ. Still today, there are a lot of questions that arise, and we will see if we can cover as many as we can.

What is the product range? (00:35)
The product range of STOPAQ is comprised of wrapping bands, which are designed as a wrap-around system around tubular objects. Then on top of that, we have wrap-around systems like outer wraps as mechanical protection. We also have the paintable versions, which can be applied on flat areas like the basecoats, which are usually top-coated with different kinds of paints, et cetera. Again, depending whether it’s just cosmetic or if we need extra mechanical protection, where we will select, let’s say, tougher top-coats on that. There are always voids, there are always irregularities, and that’s where we have the paste, which is of the same compound as we use for corrosion prevention materials like the wrapping band and the base coats. But we also have fillers and putties. The putties are mainly used around flanges when you have bolts and nuts to smooth out those areas while the fillers are used to fill in the voids.

When we have voids where there can be potentially entrapped moisture or air or anything else that would cause corrosion, these materials and those can then be applied using different tools.

Is it a tape? (02:10)
When it comes to the STOPAQ, it’s packed like a tape, and it often does get confused with tapes and tape systems. But those are wrap-around systems. When it comes to STOPAQ, we can actually apply it in different ways. So for example, the wrapping bands, they do go with circumferential application, but you can also go in longitudinal application as well, and what we call a cigarette wrap. Or you can even precut the sheets and apply it like foils or stickers next to each other. So that gives you a versatility. That versatility in application also gave us the opportunities to develop products like basecoats, which are paintable versions of wrapping systems that can be applied even on flat surfaces, what we like to call Wallpaper Applied Systems.

Superior adhesion to substrates, what does it mean? (03:10)
It means you want a bond between your corrosion preventative material or waterproofing material to create a bond with the surface you wish to encapsulate, protect, and keep away from the environment. It is It’s important that you have equal adhesion to as many surfaces as possible because we have transition areas. Let’s say many times we will go in the pipeline industry, we will go from steel onto fusion bond, the proxy onto polypropylene or polyethylene. It’s a very different materials and as well as adhesion differs. We have the advantage that with STOPAQ, we have equal adhesion to the steel as well as to fusion bond epoxy. And polypropylene or polyethylene, which are generally very smooth. But because the adhesion mechanism does not need a roughness, we have immediate adhesion even to smooth surfaces. Or in the waterproofing and sealing industry, we need equal adhesion to glass as we do to the aluminum frames, as we do to the concrete to create those transitions between steel frames and the concrete or tiles or other waterproofing materials. The superior adhesion of the product is related to PIB and its cold flow properties and the dispersive adhesion mechanisms, what we mentioned before, like honey, because that’s always the best representation of how the product works. So that allows us to have that adhesion even at lower temperatures as well as higher temperatures and to different materials, even smooth materials, as smooth as glass, where in fact you will have a faster adhesion to glass because there is less roughness that you need to cover While, let’s say, rough materials like concrete and so on, it may take a little bit longer for the material to flow into the pores of the steel, or as it’s mentioned in the coating world, wet the surface.

What does non-curing mean? (05:33)
We do mention that STOPAQ is non-curing, and that means it will not crystallize, it will not cross-link over time. So it will remain the same as when you unpack it and you’re ready to apply it. That is the whole benefit of the product, that it will not cure, it will not turn into a solid, because what we see is that solids crack, solids flake off, and solids lose over time. And therefore, we have a different approach where the coating never dries.

What does minimum surface preparation mean? (6:13)
We do say minimum surface preparation. A minimum surface preparation means you have to remove loose rust and loose paint because we do need a firm surface to adhere to. While the surface may still look rusty, it may be clean enough for our product, but you have a perfect product to actually check the adhesion with. Because the product doesn’t change, you can actually use the product to verify, is the surface clean enough or good enough for the application? You take a little piece of the product, you apply it onto the surface, and you try to peel it off. If you get what we call a cohesive fracture, it means you’re good to go.
If it comes off, well, then maybe you need to do more surface preparation. Maybe the pipe is condensing and maybe you need another product, but it does tell you a lot.

How much is minimum surface preparation? (07:05)
Minimum surface preparation is mainly removal of loose rust or loose paint. It doesn’t mean we have to completely remove all the rust or to create a surface profile for which, in most cases, we use compresses and abrasives or abrasive blasting.

No shutdown needed? (7:30)
We do mention no shutdown needed at times, and that is part of the approach that we said as contractors, where we can go into live facilities that have pipes operating at different temperatures. Because we don’t have a curing process, and a lot of the times the curing process is interfered by the temperature of the surface. So for example, if you have curing coatings, you can accelerate the curing process with hot temperatures, for example, 90 degrees. Fast curing will force the coatings to cure before they wet the surface, making them crack and flake off the pipe. Again, because STOPAQ has these fluid-like properties, it will flow into the pores of the steel, but it will not change its properties in the sense of drying or curing, and that’s why it will remain. And that’s why we can actually apply degrees surface temperature as the temperatures that we say are the maximum operating temperatures. So if we say 120 degree is the maximum operating temperature for one of our products, then we can actually apply the product at as well.

Preventing corrosion with STOPAQ.