Jotun Hosts Technical Seminar For New York-Based Shipowners

Jotun Marine Coatings and Jotun-Baltimore Copper Paint Company recently hosted a reception and technical seminar at the Whitehall Club for shipowners and operators in the New York City area. Torstein Bryn, public relations/marketing manager for Jotun Marine Coatings, Sandefjord, Norway, described his company's philosophy regarding the financial aspects in the choice between traditional and sophisticated antifouling coating systems.

Using figures representative of a 280,000-dwt turbine tanker, Mr.

Bryn described Jotun's extensive research and experience in coatings technology, which show that considerable savings can be achieved from an investment in a sophisticated hull coating system such as Jotun's Takata LLL organo-tin, acrylcopolymer selfpolishing antifouling or its Seamaster chlorinated rubber / cuprous oxide system developed especially for reactivation.

Traditionally, the main object of using antifouling systems on ships has been to keep their bottoms free from fouling. Relatively low speeds and reasonable bunker prices made it necessary to consider only the rather extensive roughness created by organisms that could under bad conditions settle on the underwater hull, thus reducing speed significantly.

In the mid-seventies, however, a new concept was brought up, namely the requirement for keeping the ships' bottoms not only fouling-free, but also as smooth as possible in order to reduce skin friction to the lowest possible level, thereby enabling the owners to economize substantially on fuel consumption. This is, of course, due to the fact that on larger vessels 80 percent of the resistance to movement through water is due to skin friction.

Jotun Marine Coatings, as well as other paint manufacturers and research institutions, several years ago began to look more thoroughly into what could be done to reduce skin friction. Jotun's answer is the Seamaster and Takata LLL systems which, according to Mr. Bryn, have now been thoroughly tested over a number of years in cooperation with shipowners, and Jotun has been able to collect performance data that clearly prove the great savings in fuel consumption.

A/S Jotungruppen, more commonly known as Jotun, is an in- ternational group of companies with worldwide activities. Its main products are marine coating systems and coatings for corrosion protection in the oil and chemical industries; domestic and industrial paints, polyester plastics, polyurethane foams, and fiberglass-reinforced polyester pipes and tanks.

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