Industry Spotlight: Marine

It’s not hard to imagine what the equipment and building structures often feature in the marine industry have to go through on a daily basis. While most of them have to be submerged in water, and some in deep sea, you can easily understand why protective coatings are so important to provide a longer lifespan as well as optimal functionality while preventing material degradation in such aggressive environments.

Applications for the Marine Industry

A&A Coatings works with many businesses in the marine and offshore industry and in fact, this industry constitutes one of our biggest industry-specific customer bases. There are many applications that you can use marine industry coatings for, so here’s a brief look at some of them:

Subsea Equipment

The operating conditions for subsea equipment are terribly harsh, to say the least. Such equipments are used in environments that feature very high internal temperatures from hot production fluid as well as subsea external temperatures that can be near the freezing point. With protective thermal spray coatings from A&A Coatings, your subsea equipment will not buckle under the stress of such challenging environments and can feature a longer lifespan without the need of constant repair.

Submarine Electrical Connectors

A&A Coatings is an NAVSEA-S9320-AM-PRO-030 approved supplier who has been awarded many large contracts by the US Navy to spray submarine electrical connectors for use by the US Navy and its contractors. The coatings we achieved via the plasma spray process help the electrical connectors to be non-conductive when used in submarine settings.

Splash and Tidal Zones

Because of the constant abrasion experienced with wave and tidal surges or the extreme salinity or the constant dry-wet cycle, there’s no denial that splash and tidal zones require protective coatings like no other. Our thermal spray coatings can protect steel structures in such aggressive environments so that the structures will not experience premature degradation.

Structural Steel Protection

Regardless whether we are talking about FPSOs, drill rigs, or offshore platforms, the same issue crops up again and again because of the aggressive environments that these structures are exposed to. The coating technologies that A&A Coatings works with are able to provide superior protection against, wear, corrosion, erosion and more so that the structural steel remains immune for longer to the different harsh elements.

Ship Decks and Floors

You want your ship decks and floors to be non-skid and chemical resistant besides being more durable in challenging environments. This is not entirely possible with using paints and that’s why marine industry coatings can help you preserve these structures in the best condition for longer.

Thermal Spray Processes Often Utilized for the Marine Industry

Because the most desired characteristics of thermal spray coatings for the marine industry are wear resistance and corrosion resistance, most marine equipment will require the need of coatings achieved via these processes:

Under the metalizing process, all three types of techniques which include the electric arc spray, combustion powder spray, and combustion wire spray processes are used popularly to achieve marine industry coatings. For example, many shipping containers use coatings from such metalizing processes as well as do the metallic sliding surfaces that are featured in marine engines. HVOF coatings are also increasingly replacing hard chromed plated surfaces such as ball valves, pumps, seals, and hydraulic shafts.

For the marine industry, thermal spray coatings often consist of materials such as ceramics, metals, plastics, and carbides. It is no exaggeration to say that any structure or equipment you see in marine and offshore environments will have components that are protected by thermal spray coatings. This trend is not likely to change anytime in the future and it’s important to see how big an impact the thermal spray industry has on the marine industry today and in the future.