A new robot may help keep ships’ bottoms clean

United States News News

A new robot may help keep ships’ bottoms clean
United States Latest News,United States Headlines
  • 📰 TheEconomist
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 63 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 29%
  • Publisher: 92%

Replacing a ship's cleaning regime with a robot could save its owner 4,000 tonnes of oil a year, and around $800,000 in fuel bills

suffer from fouling: the build-up below the waterline of shellfish, seaweeds and other organisms. This causes drag, which slows the affected craft and increases its fuel consumption. Regular hull cleaning thus makes a considerable difference to the profitability of shipping.

At the moment, cleaning at sea is done by teams of divers. In recent years, robots have sometimes been added to underwater cleaning crews, and have proved effective. Jotun, a Norwegian coatings company, and Semcon, a Swedish engineering firm, propose, however, to go one step further. They want to replace the divers completely with a machine. That machine, moreover, would not merely defoul a ship’s hull, but stop it fouling up in the first place.

The idea is to keep the hull permanently clean, by regularly removing from it the layers of slime-producing bacteria that are the first stage of the fouling process. Bacterial biofilms, as these layers are known technically, are used as anchorages by the larvae of so-called “hard growth” organisms, such as barnacles and molluscs, and by the spores of trailing seaweeds.

A bonus of all this effort is that an unfouled ship has little risk of carrying unwanted passengers in the form of alien animal species that might make a nuisance of themselves if they were to become established far from home. Asian paddle crabs, North Pacific seastars, Asian green mussels and European fan worms are four common hull-fouling animals that can turn into pests if introduced into the wrong settings.

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

TheEconomist /  🏆 6. in US

United States Latest News, United States Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

A Controversial Deep-Sea Expedition May Retrieve The 'Last Voice' Of The TitanicA Controversial Deep-Sea Expedition May Retrieve The 'Last Voice' Of The TitanicA salvage company wants to recover the Titanic's wireless Marconi telegraph, which was used to call for help after the ship struck an iceberg in 1912. The mission's backers call the device the 'last voice' of the sunken ship. hereandnow
Read more »

How robots are replacing wheelchairs to help people with disabilities walk againHow robots are replacing wheelchairs to help people with disabilities walk againThe design of the wheelchair, the primary solution mobility challenges, has not changed drastically in hundreds of years. Walking robots may be ready to disrupt the space.
Read more »

U.S. diplomats wary of new watchdog's plans for probes into PompeoU.S. diplomats wary of new watchdog's plans for probes into PompeoState Department officials are increasingly uneasy with their new acting inspector general, fearing he has conflicts of interest that could lead him to derail ongoing investigations—including ones into Mike Pompeo—while endangering cooperating witnesses
Read more »

Louisville demonstrators help clean up protest areaLouisville demonstrators help clean up protest areaWATCH: Louisville demonstrators help clean up protest area.
Read more »

All-Natural & Organic BB Creams to Keep Your Skin Happy & HealthyAll-Natural & Organic BB Creams to Keep Your Skin Happy & HealthyWe’ve rounded up a few of our favorites formulas to help you add to your growing clean beauty collection.
Read more »



Render Time: 2025-02-13 20:07:13