Talk about raising the bar…just add raising barges to the diversity of the amazing EPS, expanded polystyrene. It is commonly used for flotation but the ingenuity of this project with the use of ICA-LITE® blocks was not only creative but brave engineering.
ICA-LITE EPS Raises Sunken Barge
In 2006 there was a mishap and the barge sank. A crane was ordered to pull the barge up to the surface. However, the barge weighed 1,100 tons and the crane had a 300 ton limit. The crane then joined the barge under the Hudson River in New York. (Probably not a great day for the person who made that decision.) A larger crane was brought in to raise the sunken crane, but the barge was still under water. ICA-LITE® EPS blocks to the rescue! Fifteen truckloads of ICA-LITE blocks were injected into the sunken barge to displace the water. The buoyancy of the blocks allowed the barge to return to the surface.
The photos in this short video are not of the highest quality, but it is well worth watching this ingenious solution.
Learn more about the buoyancy properties of ICA-LITE®.
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This article was posted on July 13, 2012, by Insulation Corporation of America (ICA) – a Women-Owned manufacturer of Geofoam and Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), which is commonly but mistakenly referred to as Styrofoam™. ICA is located in Allentown, PA and services the entire Mid-Atlantic Region from Virginia to Maine to Ohio.
