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Synthetic Sebum Makes Slippery Sailboats
sonnejw0 writes "Sea-faring vessels are a major contributor of greenhouse gas production due to a deficit in international laws and inherent inefficiencies at sea, such as barnacle build-up on hulls. Many marine animals avoid the build-up of drag-inducing barnacles through secreting oily residues from their pores or through the nano-molecular arrangement of their skin. Sailors regularly defoul their hulls, removing the barnacles at dry-dock, which requires them to reduce the amount of time they have at sea. Some synthetic chemicals in paints have been used to prevent barnacle build-up but have been found to be toxic to marine animals and thus outlawed by several nations. Now, engineers are trying to replicate the skin of marine animals to produce a slippery hull to which marine bacteria cannot attach, saving fuel costs and improving speeds."
The image of a smegma producing sail yacht is now stuck in my head!
Where's the brain bleach when you need it!
I would have been the "first post", but, well there were too many potential jokes.
I really like "Sailors regularly defoul their hulls", but then there's the "Sebum"/"Semen" play on words which is always popular.
"dry-dock" change some letters...
oh my goodness I just can't decide, so I've lost my first post chance.
So I guess I'll just RTFA and ponder how OpenBSD would help with this problem without even making a "soviet russia" or "natalie portman" reference
A surface that inhibits barnacles is only a start, for there are other things one can do to make a ship more eco-friendly
One if obviously a more fuel efficient engine
The other is to improve the design of the propeller to make it more efficient while lessen the drag
Then there is the need for a much lighter material for the construction of the ships
Last but not least, new designs of ships are also needed.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Anybody care to calculate exactly how many orders of magnitude greenhouse gasses from seagoing vessels are below automobile emissions?
Yes, every little bit helps, but the driving force behind keeping ships barnacle-free without drydocking sure as shit isn't to ameliorate global warming. Better efficiency and being able to be at sea more is why this is being looked at - NOT greenhouse gas reductions. So why the hell is a third- or tenth-order minor benefit listed described as the prime reason behind this research?
Geez.
Genetically engineered whales with a built in cargo hold. You just have to train them well, and take advantage of their natural migration patterns..
I want them to use this technology to make my willy slick 24/7....no lube needed...EVER!
Loading...
... stopped reading after the headline...
Why isn't some sort of non-stick coating such as Teflon not an option?
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
So why the hell is a third- or tenth-order minor benefit listed described as the prime reason behind this research?
If you can make ships more efficient in the water, making ships that run on renewable sources becomes more possible. Steam- and diesel-powered vessels were invented to improve speed (and capacity) in the water. The more you can improve the efficiency, the more speed you can get out of less and less energy. Which makes things like wind power (sails) or solar power (electricity) more and more of a possibility.
My blog
...and no, you don't grow out of it.
Any further discussion would be TMI.
Maybe we can line fire hoses with this amazingly slippery material?
-kgj
Staple Gun and Baby Seals? /me ducks
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
The same reason there is so much hype surrounding H1N1: to get attention.
"nano-molecular arrangement of their skin"
What does this even mean? Isn't it just the 'molecular arrangement of their skin"? Buzzwords are for business majors
Just coat the hull with sheets of gold, such as Otto Van Hoek did to the Minerva in 1690.
Why not make the hull full of indentations like a golf ball, that way the barnacles would fill in the spaces and make the ship more efficient....
Probably because only shipping-industry related people care about defouling costs and drydock days per 100 shipping days and whatnot, while "green" is the theme of the week and will garner press?
I'm sure that the writeup of the same research in whatever the trade rag for shipping/shipbuilding is is talking all about the possible efficiency benefits over conventional antifouling paint; but that is kind of a niche interest. It's pretty much like any other industry/niche specific tech work. If you are writing for the inside audience, you go over the salient benefits first. If you are writing for the peanut gallery at large, you focus on whatever is simple and has public attention at the time.
(Also, parenthetically, it is worth noting that, when trying to optimize something like fuel consumption or emissions, you don't go for the largest source first, you go for the cheapest source first and work progressively up to more expensive sources until you hit whatever the target or break-even point is.)
What does this have to do with sailboats? The article doesn't mention sailboats, and this (rather expensive sounding) technology would only be suitable for commercial cargo vessels that are in the water year-round without (ideally) extended stays in port paying mooring fees. And "Synthetic Sebum Makes Slippery Ships" would have rhymed just as nicely.
We did it once upon a time.
Apparently Supertankers and Cargo ships have cut their speeds down to 10 knots to save fuel, some of the greatest Cargo ships of the Age of Sail managed 13 knots no dinosaur juice needed.
And everything one of the other posters cited about better materials and new designs still applies.
Flettner Rotors are more efficient than conventional sails, they failed because Diesel was just too cheap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship
Enercon a Wind Turbine company built a Rotor Assisted ship to ship its Wind Turbines and cut fuel cost 30%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/flettner-rotors-cut-fuel-use.php
Sebum is the stuff that, if not properly emitted by your skin, can form a sebaceous cyst. They're pretty disgusting to drain, although sometimes doctors will just surgically remove the whole offending gland.
If you want to be grossed out, have a look:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80740591/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fsco3C_Zc
BTW, don't pop them yourself as you can get dangerous infections of you mess up. Doctors can deal with them really easily, so it's worth it to go to one if you can when you have one.
It *is* measured in thousands of GPM:
120 gallons per mile == 0.12 thousands of gallons per mile
See?
So why the hell is a third- or tenth-order minor benefit listed described as the prime reason behind this research?
If you can make ships more efficient in the water, making ships that run on renewable sources becomes more possible. Steam- and diesel-powered vessels were invented to improve speed (and capacity) in the water. The more you can improve the efficiency, the more speed you can get out of less and less energy. Which makes things like wind power (sails) or solar power (electricity) more and more of a possibility.
True, but that's still a second-order benefit at best because shipowners ALREADY wanted more efficient ships long before any environmental concerns ever arose because such ships have always been cheaper to run.
Look at the changes in ships between 1850 and 1950. Do you really think environmental concerns drove those changes? Do you really think the owners of Liberian-flagged and Filipino-and-others-crewed vessels really care one whit about the environment? Yet even those ships have become more efficient and therefore more environment-friendly over the decades.
And that's only because when large ocean-going vessels are involved, the profit motive aligns pretty nicely with environmental concerns.
This is factually wrong. Ocean going transport represents a significant portion of all pollutions, including green house gasses.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Say that three times quickly
Last I heard, the pollution generated by 8 supercargo ships was equivalent to the total released by every road vehicle in America. That is quite significant.
I don't really care about global warming that much (ok, I do, but its not my primary motivation for my energy policy beliefs). The climate will change, one way or the other regardless of what we do. We are in a warm period of an ice age, sooner or later that ice age will end, it may also return to global glaciation at some point before that.
... until you realize you'll still have to send someone under the hull to make sure your opponent hasn't ice-picked a towel to your keel.
What?
Wouldn't that save more fuel in something other than a *sail*-boat?!
Errant preachers travel for free! *
* select destinations only.
Am I the only one who thought of this? "Synthetic Sebum Makes Slippery Sailboats", if you know what I mean. *wink* *wink*
Spork.
P.S. Spork.
Great ideas like this (and this one too) are covered in Janine Benyus' speech, available on TED!
So it's back to Whale Oil is it? Queequeg will be pleased.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Last I heard, the pollution generated by 8 supercargo ships was equivalent to the total released by every road vehicle in America. That is quite significant.
I don't really care about global warming that much (ok, I do, but its not my primary motivation for my energy policy beliefs). The climate will change, one way or the other regardless of what we do. We are in a warm period of an ice age, sooner or later that ice age will end, it may also return to global glaciation at some point before that.
WHAT? EIGHT ships? Eight?
Are you kidding?
Somebody yanked your chain good and yanked it good.
And you apparently didn't even think about it.
If you put 2 20,000 HP diesels in those 8 ships - that's 16 diesel engines. Hell, put four in each vessel - that'd be 32 diesel engins. Just have them spewing raw exhaust into the atmosphere, you'd match what? A few hundred 18-wheeler trucks?
you go for the cheapest source first
I would rather say you go for the most cost effective improvements first. I assume you mean to go after the low hanging fruit first. There's no point wasting time on optimizations that don't give decent returns for your dollar. Even if they're cheap they're still a waste of money. It may well be possible to spend less on one expensive but effective optimization rather than implementing a bunch of cheap but ineffective optimizations - even if they both yield the same net improvement.
Sea-faring vessels are a major contributor of greenhouse gas production due to a deficit in international laws and inherent inefficiencies at sea, such as barnacle build-up on hulls.
Sea-faring vessels are the single most efficient way of transporting goods we have. The reason they're a big contributor of greenhouse gas production is that our global economy requires that a lot of goods are transported around the world. Try transporting thousands of containers across thousands of miles by truck (please, don't actually try this, it's bad for the environment).
The IMO (wikipedia) is one of the most widely acknowledged international authorities on anything. They've made a lot of internationally respected laws, improving sea transport on many levels, including the environmental effects.
It's true that hull fouling is a problem for ships. It's also true that many (especially large) ships burn Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), which contains a lot of pollutants (like sulfur) and isn't as clean as, say, diesel oil. It's also true that ships burn a lot of HFO, and it's true that ships further pollute the seas by dumping garbage overboard.
However, while the amounts of HFO burned by, say, the Emma Maersk, are enormous (about 300 metric tonnes per day at full operation), this is almost nothing when compared to trucks. Assuming 300mt/day at a cruise speed of 25 knots (over 45km/h), that equates to roughly 30 tonnes per 100 km. A semi-trailer truck pulling two TEU containers runs at around 30 liter per 100 km (that's around 8 mpg, anyone that can confirm this number?). This means the Emma Maersk, carrying 14000 TEU, uses 1000 times as much fuel as a truck carrying 2 TEU, which makes this ship about 7 times as fuel efficient as trucks.
And another thing: with HFO costing 300-400 dollars per metric ton, the Emma Maersk burns up about 100,000 dollars per day when running at full capacity (this almost never happens, especially now with the economic crisis, but bear with me). That's about 3 million dollars a month in fuel. The Emma Maersk is crewed by a minimum of 13 seafarers, but let's take 20 for easier calculations, since it's probably closer to reality anyway. Suppose each of those 20 people earn 10,000 dollars a month (which is a lot - maybe the Captain, Chief Officer and Chief Engineer make this much... just maybe). That means total crewing costs for this ship would be 200,000 dollars a month, with fuel costs 15 times higher. What I'm trying to say here is this: it's in the companies' best interest to improve their fuel economy. A 7% increase in fuel efficiency would save them more money than not having to pay the crew. I'm fairly certain there are no cheap and easy ways to drastically reduce fuel usage, or they would have thought of it by now.
All of this is not to say that there isn't room for improvement in the maritime transportation business, far from it. This research and other research like it can and will do great things for the shipping industry and the environment. I just didn't like how the summary made the industry the bad guy here.
P.S. If you want to read more about the IMO's actions on air pollution: go nuts.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
as the article summary implies. They're crustaceans (thus related to crabs and lobsters), their phylum is arthropod.
I live in an area with lots of small interconnected lakes and streams. We have big problems with invasive species attaching themselves to boats as they move through different waterways (the zebra mussel is one good example), this kind of material would be great for even smaller applications like motorboats that traverse these water ways to decrease invasive species proliferation.
neorush
If you can make ships more efficient in the water, making ships that run on renewable sources becomes more possible.
While there may be technical merit to what you say, the economics imply the reverse.
If the ship is more energy-efficient, the savings from switching to renewable energy will be lower, which in turn will delay the transition to renewable energy sources.
Energy efficiency is a bit of double-edged sword in this regard, but there is still the big picture. The more time existing ships can spend at sea, the fewer ships we'll need to build to get the job done. A win for energy consumption in end, yes---but be careful of the assumption that it will benefit the adoption of renewable energy sources.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Synthetic Dandruff.
They've banned tributyltin? We were supposed to haul out my Mom's boat last year. Snooze, you lose.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
It seems, that when it really matters, national laws banning undesirable practices are quite effective...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is factually wrong. Ocean going transport represents a significant portion of all pollutions, including green house gasses.
Really? So put some numbers on it.
According to this, there were 531 MILLION cars on the Earth - six years ago.
Half-a-BILLION cars - damn near all of them spewing pollutants.
And how many TENS OF MILLIONS of large trucks?
How many THOUSANDS of large-seagoing vessels that would be able to take advantage of the technology in question are there? And get this - the diesel engines of large merchant vessels aren't all that huge - 20,000 HP would be a monster. Note that there are probably 1,000 HP automobiles you can buy for some decent coin, and 300 or 400 HP cars are pretty damn common.
And that's ignoring large trucks - it wouldn't surprise me to find out that there are some trucks with bigger diesels than most ships. And there are a helluva lot more trucks on this planet than there are ships.
Now, toss in the fact that the relatively tiny engine on a ship has all kinds of space to hold pollution-abatement gear that won't fit on a car or even a truck, and I must come to this conclusion:
YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT.
Of course, you didn't provide numbers, you pulled weasel-words like "a significant portion of all pollutions" out of your ass. So even if you do manage to pull some numbers that put ship-generated pollution as being six orders of magnitude lower than automobile pollution, you're going to still call that pollution "significant" and feel oh-so-smug about yourself.
Later on the internaional yacht racing rules were amended with rule no. 53,
.
The Stars and Stripes design was to use microscopic V-grooves alongside the hull, and when optimized for a specific speed throgh the water, actually gave some improvement. If the scientists could get this to work in tough conditions like on cargo ships as well, we could save a lot of energy.
Quantum hacker.
Last I heard, the pollution generated by 8 supercargo ships was equivalent to the total released by every road vehicle in America. That is quite significant.
I don't really care about global warming that much (ok, I do, but its not my primary motivation for my energy policy beliefs). The climate will change, one way or the other regardless of what we do. We are in a warm period of an ice age, sooner or later that ice age will end, it may also return to global glaciation at some point before that.
WHAT? EIGHT ships? Eight?
Are you kidding?
Somebody yanked your chain good and yanked it good.
And you apparently didn't even think about it.
If you put 2 20,000 HP diesels in those 8 ships - that's 16 diesel engines. Hell, put four in each vessel - that'd be 32 diesel engins. Just have them spewing raw exhaust into the atmosphere, you'd match what? A few hundred 18-wheeler trucks?
For at least some kinds of pollution? probably. "The 15 biggest ships emit about as much sulphur oxide pollution as all cars combined." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_pollution
Has anyone tried adding the well-known Microban additives to marine paints?
TFA states that barnacle infestation begins with filming of bacteria on the hull, followed by algea eating the bacteria, then barnacles feeding on the algea.
Some Microban additives puncture bacteria and hence kill them. They are used in kitchen and medical equipment and institutional wall paints. Why not attack the root of the food chain rather than the top rung?
"or through the nano-molecular arrangement of their skin" should be "or through their skin".
Oh wait, we talked about pores already?
The entire sentence should be dropped.
Not everything has to be nano, cyber, 2.0, cloud-based, or other such bullshit, kids.
We could just keelhaul more people. They'll scrape all the crap right off the bottom of your ship. Or they'll get stuck down there and create a bigger problem. Either way, it's entertainment. Yar.
It's how they misjudge the entrance of the poopdeck from the cargo hold, now THAT'S epic-fail; wouldn't want any of those braunacles on the Lord's writing implement from failing the proscribe of draft to the children from Heaven.
Or GMO a giant clam to grow it's shell in the shape of a Deep-V hull, then spike a captain's bridge and servo'd aft damper onto it's head with a nervous-system override device so we can control the bivalve jet propulsion, trim, tilt, and attack?
Why don't I just use you as a bodyboard next time I go surfing off Laguna Beach? Planet-X, or Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman will kill us before anything like this will make be usefull.
And don't get me started on how ridiculously long-winded the summary is. By the second sentence, I was thinking, it's a summary, not the actual friggin article. Get to the point already!
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I guess good news travels slowly. ;-)
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
For pleasure yacht sailors this is a big topic.
It is a constant battle against marine life which wants to live on any part of the hull in the water.
The main antifouling up to now which has been very effective is hard bottom paints containing Tributyltin. wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tributyltin
This has unfortunately been proven to be fairly toxic to marine life and has consequently been banned worldwide for all craft under a certain length. Not sure of the length but large shipping vessels and somewhat the navy etc are still using it as it really is the only proven way to do a good job keeping that bottom clean.
All modern antifoulings for pleasure yachts are now based one of two things. One is a copper (copper oxide) mixed with various biocides. This is a hard type paint, often merely ground copper mixed with epoxy. This will give you a very smooth finish, and it depends on the copper (which most marine life doesn't like) and the biocides to keep the hull fairly clean. You have to dive under once in a while and scrub the hull down. Small price to pay for sailing around paradise!
The other type used is called an 'ablative' paint which may or may not contain copper/biocides but is meant to flake off itself as the marine life grows on it. This does not work for boats that live more at marinas with little sailing time, and requires bottom-jobs on the boat more often. The upside is that it is much easier to apply and does not require as much hull cleaning.
It all comes down to..if they could invent something that did not require frequent haulouts and kept your hull clean and smooth, they could easily charge $500 per gallon of the stuff and people would be lining up to pay for it.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
you could just go to a developer's conference and harvest sebum there...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Not and option for sailing racing boats - International Sailing Federation Racing Rules of Sailing prohibit this kind of solution: "53 SKIN FRICTION A boat shall not eject or release a substance, such as a polymer, or have specially textured surfaces that could improve the character of the flow of water inside the boundary layer."
I *swear* I saw something about this on "Tomorrow's World" (BBC science magazine programme) back in the '80s.
Am I the only one who picked up on all the tongue twisters?
Synthetic Sebum Makes Slippery Sailboats
barnacle build-up on hulls.
Many marine animals
These are just the few attempts, even Timothy picked up on it with "so say we all dept"
The Port of Long Beach has some Green initiatives going, supplying dockside power to ships, etc.
A ship runs its diesels even at dock to supply the ~6 mw of power that the ship's systems need.
One of their blurbs says that one large ship running off of dockside power instead of diesels will reduce the same pollution as 133000 cars for a day.
I was pretty astounded...this is just for an idling ship, not one that's under way.
sr
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain