Ship owners and operators have an exciting new opportunity for hull fouling protection with the recent launch of AkzoNobel’s Intercept® 8500 LPP, biocide-based antifouling, part of the International range of marine products.

The latest product in AkzoNobel’s biocidal antifouling range, launched in March, marks the latest step change in hull protection technology. The ground-breaking hull coating offers ship owners and operators an unbeatable combination of robust antifouling protection and predictable linear polishing for in-service periods of up to 90 months.
 

Newbuilding and M&R
 

Suitable both for vessels at newbuilding and maintenance at dry dock, Intercept 8500 LPP slots in to AkzoNobel’s fouling control portfolio at the top end of its biocidal range. Early applications include a series of new container ships under construction in South Korea.

The hull coating is applied in exactly the same way as other biocide-based products and requires no special treatment or additional resources.

“Our scientists have been working on this for more than 10 years,” says Carl Barnes, Global Market Segment Manager for Antifoulings. “Although TBT coatings were quite rightly phased out because they were damaging to the environment – and we were the first marine coatings company to stop using them – they were popular with ship owners and operators because of their predictable linear polishing rate over time. This meant that just the right amount of paint could be applied for a given dry-docking cycle.”

“Matching this linear performance has been a constant challenge but now our world-leading research chemists and polymer experts have formulated a product that is both an excellent antifouling and also has a highly predictable polishing rate over time.”
 

Outstanding performance
 

In pre-launch trials the new coating demonstrated outstanding performance in some of the world’s highest fouling-challenged ocean regions and has been shown in these trials to outperform all other biocidal antifoulings that it was tested against.

Trials included Intercept 8500 LPP applications to the hulls of ocean-going vessels trading on high-risk fouling routes out of the Arabian Gulf to South East Asia. Product performance was first rate.

Intercept 8500 LPP is the result of AkzoNobel’s research chemists and polymer experts who have utilized the linear polishing behaviour of the patented Lubyon® polymer used in the formulation of existing Intercept products and combined with the latest silyl methacrylate self-polishing copolymer.

This combination of polymers along with an optimized biocide package has produced a product that delivers the highest performance of all AkzoNobel’s deep sea biocidal antifouling products while delivering linear polishing performance.
 

Fine-tuning the paint spec
 

Although trials have intentionally been conducted in relatively warm waters with a major hull-fouling challenge, the condition of ships’ hulls in practice clearly varies depending on regional deployment and operating profile. The cold waters encountered in the northern seas, for example, pose far less of a fouling challenge than warm and fertile seas in the tropics.

AkzoNobel is the only marine coatings manufacturer to provide a means by which hull coating specs can be tailored to an individual ship’s operation. Intertrac Vision, AkzoNobel’s big data hull performance management tool, provides ship operators with access to a predictive tool so that hull coating specifications and hull preparation can be tailored for maximum efficiency with an eye on careful cost control.

Customers who would like to know more about Intercept 8500 LPP and how hull coating specifications can be tailored to fit the requirements of individual ships in operation can contact AkzoNobel’s specially trained Intertrac Vision consultants to learn more about predicting performance, and to request an economic and environmental assessment of hull coating options.
 

Complete confidence
 

AkzoNobel’s marine coating business is so confident that Intercept 8500 LPP will match and probably exceed expectations that it is extending its performance guarantee arrangements. The enhanced guarantees incorporated in Performance Maintenance Agreements will include guaranteed average degradation of no more than 4% compared to the post benchmark period and a static performance guarantee of 35 days. Both of these assurances exceed those offered on other biocidal products available in the range today.