Hydrex gets European Union approval for a Life demonstration project

In the first of a series of projects partially funded by the European Commissions DG for Environment, the Hydrex's Life Project has been launched at SMM Hamburg.

The Life Project is a demonstration of the lifelong non-toxic properties of hard coatings for ships' hulls and other external surfaces that, in combination with its underwater maintenance concept, will prevent fouling adequately, stop emissions to air and water bodies during its application and decrease the fuel consumption of ships whilst avoiding unnecessary emissions of greenhouse gases. The system will create value for ship owners and society by providing an economical ecological and safe alternative to the conventional toxic anti-fouling paints which are used by most European ship owners for the protection of ship hulls. The partners engaged in this project are the Antwerp Maritime Academy, Exmar, Codralux, ERM, Vito, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research, Interscan, the Port of Antwerp, Rijkswaterstaat Zeeland and Wallenius.

The actions will focus on the application and subsequent inspections of a special non-toxic coating on 7 different vessels and the actions will consist mainly of

• set up monitoring plans for shipowners to collect data regarding their ship, type of operations and navigation, including figures on fuel consumption.
• build and test four underwater maintenance prototypes to perform the conditioning and cleaning of ship hulls in the most economical and environmentally friendly way.
• execute and analyze the experiments in order to find the optimal operating conditions for the hard coating.
• develop an implementation/maintenance plan for each type of vessel.
• integrate the data relating to the 7 vessels into existing MOPSEA model (acknowledged traffic related emission model for sea-going vessels) and extrapolate fuel saving figures and greenhouse gas emissions to a part of the fleet and on all vessels in Europe.

This new project holds a great deal of promise for a more economical and non-toxic approach to protective and anti-fouling coatings for sea-going vessels.