Get a scrubber on board

Miko Marine has a number of new technologies to their name. This one, the SteelClimber, is an air operated magnetic crawler that works its way across surfaces that need cleaning, scrubbing away marine growth as it goes. It has two independently driven and controlled belt systems and can operate on vertical, horizontal or curved steel plates in upright position or upside down.

‘We expect it to find a big market within the shipping industry, because this unit will clean hulls without needing to put the vessel in dry dock. It can be operated while the vessel is at sea, both below and above the water line’, said Miko’s Leif Stana of the Steel Climbing division.

This translates to a reduction in fuel costs, as dirty hulls contribute significantly to drag. A clean hull will travel through the water anything up to 10% faster than a dirty one.

The unit can be manufactured to specific sizes, all the way down to a compact 400mm and 20kg weight and, as there is no upper limit on size, it can be manufactured to take on very large areas indeed. A new, smaller pipe climber is under development and will be launched in the near future.

The Miko Steel Climber will also work on internal and external tank surfaces, and can at present cope with traversing corner angles of up to 60°. A unit that will cope with 90° corners is in the process of being designed.