Boat Toilets Professionals Share Insight Into the Benefits of Copper Antifouling Paint
Your Boat Toilets Analysts Are Aware That Copper Could Be The Best Bet
Raritan Engineering wants to share with you these amazing points to consider when choosing your next anti-fouling paint.
As we point out in the October 2012 of Practical Sailor, cuprous oxide (copper) still rules the roost when it comes to long-term anti fouling protection, with hard paints and ablative paints fairly evenly matched for durability.
With respect to bottom paints, marine biologists are most concerned about the effects of copper leaching, so it would seem a simple matter to discern which paints have the most copper in them.
To see whether we could nail down a more definitive answer this question, we turned to Interlux’s Jim Seidel (who, as far as I can tell, talks about bottom paint in his sleep).
When an anti fouling paint goes through the registration process, the maker has to prove to the EPA that it is effective. One of the ways paint makers prove this is by indicating what registered biocides are in the paint. Then, the paint maker has to provide a leach rate, which measures how much biocide leaches out of the paint.
So the key is to establish a level at which the biocide coming out of the paint film will control fouling. Cuprous oxide is an excellent biocide for all types of fouling, but it requires a much higher leach rate to control slime and algae than it does to control barnacles.
Your Boat Toilets Experts Want to Help You Control Micro and Macro Fouling
Your boat toilets specialists know that to control both macro and micro fouling, you would make a fairly soft paint with a high load of cuprous oxide. With cuprous oxide currently selling at somewhere between $4 and $4.25 per pound, this paint would be expensive and not last very long.
This leads to a discussion of ablative paints. Ablative means "to wear away," and there are several ways paint wears away. The most basic ablatives are soft sloughing paints that wear very quickly, with the wear-rate varying with the temperature of the water. The warmer the water, the faster it wears away.
Hard paints work by leaching biocide out of the paint film and leaving the paint film behind, which creates a honey-combed matrix surface. The biocide that is supposed to leach out is trapped in the paint film below until either the honey-combing becomes brittle enough to break off, or someone scrubs it to remove the layer of paint and exposes fresh biocide. Scrubbing of course, causes biocide to be leached into the water at a higher than usual rate, which is why some ports like the Port of San Diego have adopted new bottom cleaning regulations.
A little about hard paints: Not all hard paints are rock hard. One quick way Seidel tests hardness is to rub his thumb on the paint film as the boat is pulled from the water. If there is no paint on his thumb, it scores a 10, and if his thumb is colored with paint and he can see through to gelcoat or primer, he gives it a 1.
Comparing copper content alone is also problematic because not all of the copper leaches out of some paints. This residue copper often enters the environment as it is sanded or rinsed from your hull ashore.
Bottom line: Because of the number of variables involved, it is very difficult to make any definitive conclusion as to whether hard paints or ablative paints are the “friendliest” for every sailor. Total copper (cuprous oxide) content does seem to offer a good starting point, but there are many other factors to consider.
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Description : Boat Toilets Professionals Share Insight Into the Benefits of Copper Antifouling Paint
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