THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260338
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 96 lines
Blasting a ship's hull clean and repainting it is one of the dirtiest jobs in ship repair.
And there has been little that shipyards could do to control the release into the air of dust, grit and clouds of smog-creating volatile organic compounds during the process.
One Norfolk shipyard, however, believes it has developed a solution.
Metro Machine Corp. has spent more than $10 million over the past five years developing and building a system to control and even clean emissions during the blasting and painting of ships in drydock.
Metro Machine is trying to get the Environmental Protection Agency to approve the system, which would bring it into compliance with new Clean Air Act regulations. EPA inspectors visited the shipyard Wednesday to see the system, known as CAPE.
Metro Machine also has begun marketing CAPE to other shipyards, both nationally and internationally. It has patented CAPE in all the world's shipbuilding nations.
``It is a credit to the shipyards that they are making the effort to cut down on their emissions,'' said Mike Kensler, Hampton Roads director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Blasting and painting in the region's shipyards have contributed to the heavy concentration of toxins in the Elizabeth River, Kensler said.
``It's a dirty business,'' he said. ``But they are making an effort.''
Metro Machine began using CAPE, which stands for Compliant All Positions Enclosure, in Norfolk for the first time this month on a production scale. It is now blasting and painting the hull of the Navy destroyer Scott in its drydock across from downtown Norfolk.
The company first used the system this winter at its leased shipyard in Philadelphia to blast and paint the hull of the combat stores ship Seattle.
``It was unquestionably a success in two areas,'' said Metro President Richard Goldbach. ``We completely contained the environmental pollution and treated it. It was a 100 percent success in that we had a bout of bad weather, but we were able to keep working. We painted continuously in weather we would not have been able to ordinarily paint in at all.''
Developed in Norfolk by engineers working for Metro subsidiary MMC Compliance Engineering Inc., CAPE is supposed to eliminate dust and paint emissions and destroy more than 95 percent of the volatile organic compounds released by painting, said MMC President Charles Garland, who is also Metro's chief engineer and vice president.
``Essentially, nothing comes out,'' Garland said.
The system coverts mostly existing technology for use in a shipyard, Garland said. It's essentially a mobile, floating paint booth similar to the paint booths used by the auto industry.
The system uses modular platforms placed around a ship's hull in drydock to seal it off from the open air. Temperature and humidity-controlled fresh air is pumped in to the sealed airspace at one end and the dust and emission-filled air is pumped out of the other. Air pressure inside the enclosure is also kept negative to make sure nothing escapes.
A support barge provides the air supply and houses a dust collector and an oxidizer that heats most volatile organic compounds to the point where they break down, or oxidize, becoming harmless.
In painting a ship the size of the 563-foot Scott, a shipyard might release nearly 4 tons of volatile organic compounds using traditional open-air painting methods, Garland said. With CAPE, that's cut to at least 400 pounds, he said.
Besides reducing polluting emissions, CAPE saves time, which means money to a shipyard and its customers. Blasting and painting the Scott would take six to eight weeks under ordinary conditions, Garland said. With CAPE, it should take four weeks.
And the shipyard can continue work elsewhere on the ship's hull without interruption because there won't be dust and grit blowing all over the dock and fumes to annoy workers, he said.
If the system catches on, it could become a whole new source of revenue for Metro Machine.
``Our intention is not to sell systems,'' Garland said. ``Our intention is to sell service. We'd go with the system and operate it.''
The system has yet to rouse much interest from private U.S. shipyards, though Garland said some of the Navy's shipyards are interested.
Other shipyards are paying attention to it, however, because they ``must adhere to the requirements visited upon us by the environmental agencies,'' said Douglas Forrest, vice president at Colonna's Shipyard Inc. in Norfolk.
All yards must have a plan to control their emissions under the Clean Air Act by the end of the year.
But the CAPE system is very expensive and may not be the most cost-effective control technology, Forrest said.
The Navy and other researchers are developing other techniques, he said.
``The jury's still out,'' he said. ``It's still in its infancy and it's still in the lab and the lab is Metro Machine. I have yet to see any objective data, only subjective arguments.'' ILLUSTRATION: B\W photo by Huy Nguyen\The Virginian-Pilot
Their backs to CAPE's outer enclosure, workers prepare to blast and
paint a ship at Metro Machine's Norfolk Yard.
B\w illustration
KEYWORDS: METRO MACHINE SANDBLASTING by CNB