Risk Focus: Paint

Paint is important in asset protection. It can have a profound effect on both running costs and revenue generation.

The primary role of a coating is to protect the asset from the environment it has to work in, in order to provide as long a service life as possible. Not only does corrosion affect service life, it has a real and detrimental effect on costs to the asset owner in terms of service time, down time, performance levels and ultimately, asset value.

One of the biggest areas  for coating issues is found in  cargo tanks -coating problems can directly affect revenue generation.

The cargo carrying spaces on board a vessel primarily require corrosion protection.

For chemical and product tankers that require carriage of high purity cargos, coating the tanks  preserves the purity of the cargo by preventing contamination from the steel substrate. Uncoated mild steel tanks will corrode when aqueous and water containing cargoes are carried. These tanks would then be unsuitable for carrying higher purity cargoes such as methanol etc.

A good tank lining also speeds up the cleaning process during cargo sequencing.

It is well recognised that as the coating comes towards the end of its lifetime, cargoes move towards the  'dirty end' of the spectrum where coating condition is not an issue. However, these cargoes are not as valuable as the high purity ones, so the tanks need to be kept in as good a condition as possible to maintain this higher revenue.