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. This offers a great advantage to both the shipyard and shipowner. By doing away with full repaints of the underwater hull during upcoming dockings, Ecospeed actively helps shipowners in achieving the lengthening of the drydock interval that they strive for.
Because Ecospeed is 100% non-toxic and promotes environmentally safe maintenance, the owner’s choice of Ecospeed also offers significant value to a company’s corporate responsibility towards cleaner seas and environmentally safe ship hull husbandry. And since Ecospeed maintains its smoothness throughout its entire lifetime, the coating allows owners to always operate their vessel in excellent condition. This results in reduced fuel consumption and an even greater reduction of the carbon footprint.
Further maintenance of the underwater hull is very easy, whether in-water or dry. This is achieved by Ecospeed’s non-stick properties that make it difficult for fouling organisms to attach themselves to the hull. Maintenance procedures can be repeated whenever needed during the vessel’s lifespan without causing damage or deterioration in the quality of the coating’s surface and even significantly improving the coating’s surface characteristics on each occasion. When using conventional paints, a vessel's average hull roughness (AHR) will gradually increase as a result of the buildup of paint layers and the general deterioration of the paint system, causing increased fuel consumption. In contrast to alternative coating schemes such as anti-fouling or silicone paints which deteriorate substantially between the vessel’s docking periods and whose maintenance is limited to dockings only, the long-lasting Ecospeed coating offers long-term fuel efficiency.
Source: Ecospeed