Fleet Cleaner has launched Thunderbird 2, a specialised hull-cleaning vessel that uses robots to clean the hulls of seagoing vessels.
Thunderbird 2 is believed to be the first world’s first ship that can clean tankers explosion-safe during loading and unloading.
This is possible as both the accompanying cleaning robot as well as the crane and all the equipment on deck is ATEX certified, which makes it explosion-safe, explained Fleet Cleaner’s chief executive officer, Alex Noordstrand. “We followed the guidelines that tankers themselves use, from sensors that measure gas to the crew accommodation that is set to overpressure,” he said.
Fleet Cleaner’s cleaning robot, which is controlled from a working vessel, saves time by cleaning the tanker’s hull during loading and unloading and it is estimated that a shipowner saves about 10% on fuel costs, accounting for about 5,000 tonnes of CO2 savings per year per ship.
For tank-storage company Vopak, this was reason enough to participate in a pilot project with the explosion-safe installation.
So far, several tankers have been cleaned during loading and unloading, and the service is now commercially available.
Rabobank’s director of commercial banking, Mirelle Pennings, christened the vessel and said: “At Rabobank, we have been very closely associated with the TU Delft Campus and all the initiatives that arise there to help entrepreneurs grow sustainably for decades; also with the RoboHouse fieldlab from which Fleet Cleaner operates. In this way, we come into contact early with technology-driven companies and are we ready for when such companies are going through a growth spurt. Fleet Cleaner is a great example of this.”
Owners Cornelis de Vet and Alex Noordstrand are pleased. “We think it is important that now tankers can also use our services. If you consider that 90% of world trade takes place through international shipping, then cleaning all those ships yields great gains for the climate.”
Fleet Cleaner expects to add a third work vessel to its fleet by the end of this year, and it is additionally working to set up its services in world ports such as Singapore.
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