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With its ultrasound based anti-fouling system, German clean tech company HASYTEC made the protection of sea water cooling systems and propellers its core business. The Dynamic Biofilm Protection (DBP) System has already shown its efficiency

As one of HASYTEC’s goals is to keep moving forward in developing and improving other applications, 2017 was decided to[ds_preview] be the year of keeping the eyes on hull protection.

Among some test patches which had been installed on a couple of different vessels trading worldwide, a bulk carrier trading The North and Baltic Seas received an installation on its starboard side to compare this part of the hull with an untreated area, in this case portside. The vessel is equipped with a biocide-free hard coating, which makes it a very good test surface.

The installation took place in the beginning of the summer season of 2017 and the vessel recorded the position, and a couple of environment parameters as sky condition, air temp, water temp, water salinity and others on a daily base to draw some conclusions between environmental conditions and the performance of the DBP system.

The first evaluation took place in early 2018. The untreated area was found covered with the usually expected formation of fouling. The treated area was found to be different to the other areas. The protected part of the hull did not show any kind of fouling, neither biofilm or algae, nor hard marine fouling as barnacles or shells.

Only a small part of approx. 0,5m around the waterline has been found carrying a thin brown layer. This is evaluated as dead biofilm, where the water flow during sailing of the vessel is not able to swipe it away. It is being examined now if the waterline is a critical area to protect, since it is a combination of sometimes being dry and sometimes being submerged or if the range of the emitted ultrasound just ended up here.

HASYTEC Group managing director, Andreas Hoffmann, points out: »We have proven the efficiency of our DBP system already at this stage of the test runs. On the one hand we surely will carry on with it to provide our customers with long-term test results. On the other hand we already focus on class approvals which are requested by the owners to equip vessels’ hulls around the globe with our environmentally friendly and sustainable system for anti-fouling hull protection. The system itself is already designed in compliance with the appropriate regulations.« (See also HANSA coating supplement 2017.)


Jan Kelling