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Belgium-based Hydrex has laid down the gauntlet to the maritime paints and coating industry with claims that its Ecospeed paint will improve both vessel efficiency and improve the vessels environmental impact along with further efficiencies from hull and propeller cleaning, writes Samantha Fisk

Boud van Rompay, executive director, has been championing the idea of more environmental solutions in the maritime sector through his[ds_preview] »cleaner river, seas and oceans« mantra that has been incorporated in to the company.

The core business of Hydrex is in underwater hull and propeller cleaning solutions. A recent development has seen Hydrex change its approach to the type of cleaning that it does for propellers, instead of full polishing of propellers, it is now promoting regular buffing of propellers.

Van Rompay explains that: »This is actually how we do maintenance, here is how to stop all cavitation erosion on a propeller, because if you have an ultra smooth propeller you don’t have cavitation erosion. You still have cavitation going on, but you don’t have the erosion.«

The frequency of the buffing required would depend on where the vessel was sailing and also how often it was sailing. The company estimates that a shipowner would be looking at getting a vessel’s propeller buffed 3-4 times a year, but this could alter with regular inspection of the cleanliness of the propeller to a more specific cleaning schedule.

Adding to this, van Rompay claims that up to 10% could be saved by shipowners who adopt this type of propeller maintenance. Even with the costs of increased maintenance van Rompay explains that: »savings equals X times the amount of money you put in. Not to mention the cavitation erosion that you save on.«

For this type of operation Hydrex utilises its MC 111 and MC 131 tools, with the buffing of the propeller itself only lasting 2-4 hours.

Paints & coatings

In 1993 Subsea Industries, a sister company of Hydrex, started it’s development of a more long lasting and non-toxic coating for the maritime industry, after talks with Rotterdam port about the impact of tributylin (TBT) coatings was having on oceans and water in ports.

»In 1992 we were asked by the port of Rotterdam what are you going to do about the emission of TBT into the water. After a few meetings we volunteered from our view point not to clean TBT hulls, by that we killed one third of our turnover at that time and created turmoil in our company and turmoil in the companies in Rotterdam as the had to follow our example,« explains van Rompay. He adds that this is what kick-started him to developing the company’s flagship coating Ecospeed.

Ecospeed has been designed to offer a long-lasting, non-toxic protection for all ship hulls and to provide a system that keeps hulls very smooth and free of fouling for the service life of the vessel with minimal repair and no replacement. It uses a hard glass flake resin coating with manual removal of fouling at an early stage. The coating is applied in two stages at a 500 m dry film thickness (DFT). Also, in Hydrex’s portfolio is Ecofix for corrosion repair, Ecolock for more stationary items, Ecolast for the offshore wind sector and Ecoshield for protection against cavitation.

Future developments

Further developments from Hydrex in the future looked to be set towards more automated systems of cleaning, that would see ships getting cleaned going in and coming out of ports to reduce aquatic species transfer.

Although, he adds about the future of automated cleaning equipment that »you can only do 50% of a hull with a big machine, otherwise you have to use brushes for the rest. We have tried looking at this with hydrodynamics, but it could not be achieved.« Van Rompay is looking at developing a cleaning system that sits in the water that ships can sail through and be cleaned. Although, still on the design board with an ambiguous two year start date for the project, van Rompay believes that this will be the way forward for cleaning ships in the future and decreasing the pollution in our waters.