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ABSTRACT: Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) devices are subject to very aggressive environmental conditions able to decrease material properties. ECOMAR project aimed to develop, test and analyse the behaviour of improved coatings applicable to MRE devices, focusing on corrosion and biofouling. The methodology used to achieve the objectives of the project was to develop new types of protections adding nanomaterials to commercial coatings and later on, expose them to real environmental conditions, as well as accelerated aging tests to evaluate the corrosion phenomena and marine degradation, as well as to evaluate the improvement of some properties. The result of the tests concluded with some improvement in some characteristics of the coatings (as adherence). Regarding corrosion and biofouling growth, good results were obtained.
1 INTRODUCTION
The oceans are a very important renewable energy source present in various ways: wind, waves, currents and others. Offshore wind turbines and the ocean energy converters operate in a very aggressive and corrosive marine environment. In order to protect materials against the hostile marine environment, as for example, UV radiation, biofouling, corrosion, etc., it is necessary to investigate new approaches capable to mitigate or remove their negative effect on the structures. In this context, several strategies have been developed not only to mitigate them, else to study the interactions between materials and real marine environment.
One of the most important problems to overcome in the field of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) is material degradation due to marine environment, mainly marine corrosion and biofouling (Callow, 2002). At present, huge research efforts in understanding and combating biofouling and corrosion of materials and structures immersed in the marine environment are being carried out.
There are two main strategies to combat corrosion. First, using elements that corrodes instead of the material of structure (sacrificial anodes, metallic coatings, etc.) and second, using organic coatings with barrier effect. The first solution is very adequate and standardised in the Oil & Gas sector, although expensive. There are already industrial solutions such as Thermally Spray Aluminium (TSA) able to eliminate the problem of corrosion for static structures as wave energy converters for 20+ years, but this solution is not valid for applications where the speed has a dominant role. The second solution is adequate for temporary installations or with...