Micro Fibre Foil is an Alternative to Hull Coatings

Founded in 2006, Micanti is a spin off from the Technical University of Delft where Dr. Rik Breur was working on his PhD to develop ‘an effective non-toxic fouling defence technology’. The result was a micro fibre foil, which by virtue of its prickliness and the fact that it moves (sways) in the water’s currents prevents barnacles and other marine organisms from attaching to it. Dr Breur founded Micanti and the patented system is now marketed as Thorn-D.  

To quote Eric Pieters, commercial manager for Micanti, “we do prevention of underwater growth”. He went on to say that Dr Rick Breur had “studied nature itself and copied a principle that underwater organisms already use for protecting themselves against unwanted growth”.

Traditionally preventing the growth of marine fouling has been achieved using paint coatings that were toxic to marine organisms thus preventing them from colonizing. This has generally been TBT and copper based and several years ago the industry banned the use TBT for environmental reasons. Since then a lot of effort has gone into developing non-toxic systems. 

Micanti initially established themselves in the fish farming industry in Turkey. Since then they have products working successfully in the field in Norway, Scotland, Canada and Chile.
Meanwhile Micanti has been developing Thorn–D for the shipping and offshore industries. Thorn-D has been tested by the MARIN institute, TNO, Delft Technical University and in the field on several vessels including collaboration with Damen Shipyards. To date no significant negative effects on drag have been found.

Thorn-D is applied to ships hulls with a self-adhesive foil developed together with Avery Dennison (a Fortune 500 company) and requires no maintenance. Moreover the product is completely environmentally friendly in that it does not release any toxins or harmful materials which give it an absolute eco-friendly attribute - it does not kill marine life. What’s more, conventional ultra-sound surveys can be conducted through it and thus it does not impede maintenance inspections and class surveys.

At present the product has a warranty of five years minimum and is type approved by several classification societies. It is also accepted according to the IMO Anti Fouling Systems convention. Thorn-D was applied to a fish farm net the first time six years ago, and to date it still has to show signs of wear.

Eric Pieters: “less than two years ago we started in the shipping industry on a small of 200 m2 underwater surface. One year, we have applied Thorn-D on a coaster of 140 meter length (3500 m2). Clients start to understand that Thorn-D is a physical barrier and therefore has a long lifetime and a consistent performance. Today we mainly focus on the warmer regions like Middle East and Gulf of Mexico since fouling conditions are bad which allows us to show the performance of Thorn-D”.