The importance of climate control during ballast tank coating of merchant ships.

sacrificial anodes or impressed current, and/or by applying a coating. Painting steel is by far the most practical way to protect it. In order to obtain a long term coating, the paint has to be selected and applied in an appropriate manner (De Baere et al., 2014). A good application implicates amongst others appropriate climatological conditions. Neglecting the latter can influence the curing process of the paint, which leads to stress development in the coating and finally can result in cracking of the coating, delamination or blistering. Regulating bodies and cargo owners insist on a "GOOD" coating condition and thus demand attention towards climate conditions (temperature and humidity) during coating application. This involves a very high cost as it is expensive to paint blocks in a controlled manner, implicating the use of paint cells. This BOF project will investigate the importance of temperature and humidity and verify if this high cost is justified. First the importance of climate control is questioned. Next the importance of climate control is economically validated, which will be a continuation of the economic study that compares a ship with a long term ballast tank coating with an average performing coating.

Keywords:CLIMATE SYSTEM

Disciplines:Catalysis and reacting systems engineering, Chemical product design and formulation, General chemical and biochemical engineering, Process engineering, Separation and membrane technologies, Transport phenomena, Other (bio)chemical engineering

Project type:Collaboration project