Ecospeed Coating News

Subsea Industries coating systems offer many benefits to shipowners, ship managers and operators. Applying Ecospeed (or any other Subsea Industries coating) to a vessel can save much worry, time and hassle for superintendents and shipyards during drydockings, as well as save expenses for the owner. Like all Subsea Industries products, Ecospeed is an extremely hard coating system with optimized hydrodynamics that can easily be maintained in service. This has a huge potential for reducing total cost of ownership of the vessel.

Subsea Industries’ Ecospeed hull protection system has been selected for RRS Sir David Attenborough, the polar research ship under construction at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, Liverpool, U.K. The £150 million contract to build the vessel, which Cammell Laird won in 2015, represents the biggest commercial shipbuilding contract in Britain for 30 years. The ship has been commissioned by the National Environment Research Council (NERC) and will be operated by British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Subsea Industries has received an order for its specialist hull and rudder coatings for application to a shallow draught anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel under construction at Turkey’s Atlas Shipyard. The hard-type coatings were selected amidst strong competition because of their proven performance in polar waters. The Ice-Class 1A, 65m tug will carry out anchor handling and oil recovery duties in the ecologically sensitive Arctic in compliance with the IMO Polar Code requirements, due to enter into force in January.

Trading in ice is the toughest challenge for a hull coating. Regular anti-fouling paints or simple epoxies are usually scraped off by the constant abrasion of the ice, and extra drydockings are needed to repaint, often after just one season. This was a major issue for Hamburg-based shipowner Interscan Schiffahrt, which controls a fleet of 23 vessels, many of them operating in the Baltic Sea and seas in the far north. However, like other vessels operating in ice conditions, they required frequent repairs to their underwater coating, with time out of service every one or two years costing the owner dearly. The company no longer has this problem.

U.K. Royal Navy Ice Patrol Ship HMS Protector is deployed on operations for 330 days a year, mostly in the Antarctic region, making it essential that her underwater hull is protected against the harsh icy conditions she faces. At the end of May, HMS Protector was coated with Ecospeed at the A&P Tyne Ltd. Shipyard in Tyne and Wear, U.K. A top consideration in a hull coating for ice-going vessels and icebreakers is the ability of the coating to protect the hull in the harshest marine environment there is…

In order to tap into Colombian stranded gas reserves, Pacific Rubiales Energy Corporation and EXMAR nv have partnered in a project to build and operate a floating LNG liquefaction, and storage unit, the Caribbean FLNG, which will be stationed at a jetty several kilometers off the Caribbean coast of Colombia for at least 15 years. In order to protect the hull of the Caribbean FLNG, keep it clean and facilitate class inspections over that time period without recourse to drydock and without causing harm to the local marine environment…

When it comes to protecting the hulls of ice-going vessels, the glassflake reinforced surface treated composite (STC) Ecospeed has proven to be remarkably durable, typically outperforming many specialized ice class paints. The fact that the coating is non-toxic is also particularly important for ice trading vessels where toxic AF coatings are rapidly scraped off and deposit their toxic ingredients in what are often particularly sensitive environments. Icebreakers and ships that trade in icy waters have their own very specific problems when it comes to protecting their underwater hull.

Recently the underwater hull of m/v Sen. John J. Marchi, one of the ferries owned by Staten Island Ferries was coated with Ecospeed in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.A. This is the second ferry owned by Staten Island Ferries that was given an Ecospeed treatment after m/v John Noblewas coated in Bridgeport, Connecticut last year. Ecospeed was also applied on one the company’s fuel barges in Staten Island, New York earlier this year and a third ferry is planned to be coated later this year. Under normal operation, ferries have to drydock once a year to comply with classification regulations. During the busy tourist season these ferries need to be sailing so the best time for drydocking is the off season when there are fewer passengers.

In what follows Ecospeed takes a closer look at how applying Ecospeed to a vessel can save much worry, time and hassle for superintendents and shipyards during drydockings, as well as save expenses for the owner. Despite some supplier claims to the contrary, almost no underwater hull coating provides for the most basic objective which is to protect the steel from corrosion and prevent the hull from ‘roughening’ with age. When ships come into drydock, it is not uncommon to observe delamination of multiple paint layers. There is often also evidence of corrosion and hull roughening.

Two months after a Canadian shipowner applied Ecospeed for the first time to one of his ro/ro vessels, he decided to send a second ro/ro ship into drydock in Las Palmas to have the old paint system on the  underwater hull completely stripped off to bare steel to be replaced with Ecospeed. The Ecospeed system is designed to be applied in two homogeneous coats and the overcoating time is from three or four hours to weeks or months. It is designed to have a life expectancy of 25 years and is 100% non-toxic.

In February a 200-meter ro/ro vessel was given a protective Ecospeed coating in Gibraltar. Ecospeed has a life expectancy of twenty-five years and will therefore protect the vessel against cavitation and corrosion damage for the remainder of its service life without the need for a full repainting during future drydockings. Any Ecospeed application can easily be adapted to yard’s schedule or to unpredictable weather conditions because the coating requires only two layers and the second coat can be applied any time between about four hours and several weeks or even months after the first coat.

As a consequence of the current economic climate, more and more ship owners are forced to lay one or more of their ships up for longer periods. This has, however, no adverse effect on an Ecospeed coating which can always be restored to its optimum condition, regardless of how much fouling has attached itself to the hull while the vessel has been laying idle. Ecospeed is ideally suited for ships during lay-ups because of its impermeability. This gives the coating its excellent…

Recently, tow boat M/V Salvation came into drydock one and a half years after the underwater hull of the vessel was coated in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. The Ecospeed underwater hull coating was still in excellent condition. The vessel, which has been operating on the Mississippi River and along the coast of Louisiana, is the first of its kind to take advantage of the Ecospeed coating. Ecospeed is glass-like isolator which is virtually impenetrable and has a unique mechanical strength which protected M/V Salvation against sludge or the grinding impact of sand while sailing on the muddy Mississippi River and along the coast.

Ecospeed reported that when a 965-ft cruise vessel came into drydock in the Bahamas last month after sailing with the company’s hull coating for two years, less than 1% of the underwater hull needed touch ups and no new paint layers were required on the rest of the underwater hull. As a consequence the technical operations that needed to be carried out on the vessel were very easy to plan because no repaint needed to be added to the schedule. Moreover, the vessel could leave drydock earlier than would have been the case if an extensive repaint had been required.

The British Antarctic Survey selected Ecospeed to provide a coating to protect their ice strengthened research vessel Ernest Shackleton during expeditions to the Antarctic region in which it is subjected to extreme mechanical forces. The vessel was coated in Frederikshaven, Denmark, where the grit blasting and application of the two layers were done under the eye of an Ecospeed inspector. The timing was geared to the schedule of the yard. The Ecospeed coating has no maximum overcoating time. Ernest Shackleton is a 1A1 ICE-05 class icebreaker which is used for expeditions to the South Pole.

After successful results with four existing ro-ro vessels, Cobelfret NV ordered the Ecospeed coating of the thruster tunnels of five newbuild vessels, the fourth of which was coated last month. The application of the three newbuild vessels was performed at the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft mbH & Co. KG shipyard. In the same period another thruster tunnel, on a vessel owned by the U.S. Coast Guard, was also given Ecospeed protection at the Fraser Shipyards Inc. in Superior, Wis. Grit blasting and application of the two layers is completed in the presence of an Ecospeed inspector.

As a consequence of the current economic climate, more and more ship owners are forced to lay one or more of their ships up for longer periods. This has, however, no adverse effect on an Ecospeed coating which can always be restored to its optimum condition, regardless of how much fouling has attached itself to the hull while the vessel has been laying idle. Ecospeed is ideally suited for ships which have a stationary period because an impermeable barrier is created during application. This gives the coating its excellent and durable anti-corrosive properties and protects the underwater hull against mechanical damage. Despite the aggressive nature of certain types of fouling, no rust or damage to the steel will be present on the underwater hull of the vessel after cleaning.