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28Maritime Reporter & Engineering News ensure that fewer organisms settle on the hull in idle periods.? The longer the vessel is slime-free, the better its performance and operatingbudget. Now in its third generation, the proven Hempasil formula provides a good return on investment and typically saves vessel operators between four and eight per cent in fuel costs within the first year of application.To back up Hempel?s fuel savings guar- antee, the Hempasil package also in- cludes SeaTrend software, which is an onboard reporting tool, designed to helpshipowners monitor Hempasil ?s fuel saving effects for themselves. ?Hempasil has already been applied to several container vessels, bulk carriers, tankers, very large crude carriers, navy vessels, fast ferries and cruise ships,? said Torben Rasmussen, roup Product Man- ager at Hempel. ?Shipowners are using SeaTrend to track their results and so far the feedback has been extremely pos- itive. To date, Hempasil has saved our customers probably more than 0m in fuel bills and reduced global CO2 emis- sions by 200,000 tons. But potentially, it could do a lot more. If applied to the en-tire world fleet, it could save the world from 0 million tons of CO2 a year, the same amount of CO2 emitted fromreece.? ETENDED DR DOCING With Hempasil , it?s now possible for owners of container vessels, dry cargo vessels and MP?s to keep their vessels out of dock for seven-and-a-half-years. All major classification societies now have survey schemes for Extended Dry Docking (EDD), which gives shipo wners the opportunity to save money now by reducing their dry docking costs andkeeping their vessels in operation for longer periods of time. When it first came to market, the Hempasil pack- age included the Nexus tiecoat for fully blasted hulls. Hempel has since intro-duced two new tiecoats to the Nexus range.The patented Nexus -Seal tiecoat eliminates the need for full-blasting andmakes it possible to seal existing conven- tional antifoulings before applyingHempasil . Intended for situations where the anticorrosive system is still in- tact, such as relatively new ships docking for the first or second time after new- building, this solution can save shipown- ers between 40 to 45 per cent comparedto the cost of full-blasting and applyingHempasil from scratch. Nexus -Seal is a one coat solution, which helps to reduce the time and costsinvolved in dry docking, and makes the conversion from a conventional antifoul- ing system to a fouling release systemsmooth. ?ou can say that our RD team has succeeded in combining a linkcoatand a tiecoat into one single coat, whichmeans big savings on application costs,? said Rasmussen.A tiecoat created specifically for repair and touch-up procedures, HempasilNexus -Tend is used when applying a new coat of Hempasil to an existing fouling release coating. Hempasil Nexus -Tend increases dry- dock efficiency by reducing the number of steps a vessel goes through in the dock. ?Nexus -Tend makes using Hempasil as simple as using a conventional an- tifouling coating,? said Rasmussen. ?In the past, spot repair was time consuming and complex and often led to substandard results, such as poor adhesion betweencoats. But Nexus -Tend reduces the number of steps in the repair and touch-up process of damaged areas, making iteasier to paint over an old fouling release coating and thereby speed up the drydockprocess.? Hempel estimates that Hempasil Nexus -Tend could save customers up to 100,000 on dock rent, surface prepara- tion time and vessel inactivity when a vessel is undergoing drydock mainte- nance. Email: [email protected]: www.hempel.com To date, Hempasil X3 has saved probably $30m+ in fuel bills ? and reduced global CO2 emissions by200,000 tons, the com-pany estimatesTHE MARINE ENVIRONMENTFEATURE