On Marine Growth Removal on Offshore Structures

Marine growth is a severe problem to offshore structures causing additional weight, increase in surface area, and roughness resulting in larger wave loads. Historically, the offshore Oil & Gas (O&G) industry has removed the marine growth by divers and in recent years by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), while the offshore wind industry typically handles the problems by oversizing the structures instead of investing in cleaning campaigns. This paper describes the problems associated with marine growth to offshore structures, how it is currently being addressed by the O&G and Wind industries, respectively, and which potential solutions can be improved or introduced in the future. It is concluded that improvements within the design, automation, and instrumentation for ROVs can decrease the cost of marine growth removal substantially. It is predicted that the development of ROV technologies will drastically improve the marine growth removal processes.