Auto Compact Marine Growth Remover

A challenge faced by submerged constructions, e.g. offshore oil and gas platforms and wind turbine founda-tions, is marine growth. The marine growth (also called biofouling) consist of e.g. mussels and seaweed, which attached permanently to the structure and thus increases both circumference and roughness of the material.This causes additional loads and material fatigue of the construction, primarily due to I creased wave loads and the weight of the marine growth. Further, the marine growth causes complica-tions in inspecting the construction for cracks, which is important for documentation of material integrity. These disadvantages are reduced by cleaning off the marine growth periodically. Alternatively, the construc-tion is overdimensioned during the design phase to overcome the additional loads from the marine growth. Both methods are costly for the production and/or the maintenance of the constructions, and thereby also for the energy production. In this project, two of the main actors within the Danish strongholds, oil and gas (Total E&P) and wind (Sie-mens Gamesa), has joined forces to support development of an improved concept for inspection and re-moval of marine growth. The concept is based on improved robotic technology, which will raise the level of automation, and a com-pact setup that will make the operation independent of large, resource demanding vessels, which the ma-rine growth removal campaigns today depend on. The solution will be tested in the North Sea and will raise the technology level from TRL 4 to TRL 7.