Fri, 22 March, 2019
TWI Technology Fellow, Dave Harvey was in Bremen on 12-14 March to speak at the ‘Corrosion Protection for Offshore Wind’ conference. The conference was attended by wind farm operators, foundation manufacturers, corrosion management suppliers and other experts in the field.
Dave’s talk was titled ‘Exploring the use of TSA for Offshore Wind: The CROWN Projects’ and discussed two Innovate UK funded projects with a combined value of >£2.3m that are looking at how thermally sprayed aluminium (TSA) could be used to reduce the cost of foundation corrosion protection. TWI has an extensive track record in the research of TSA, a technology that is increasingly attracting attention in the offshore wind sector, particularly as it has now been implemented as the primary corrosion protection strategy on a the monopile foundations of the Arkona wind farm in the Baltic Sea.
The current CROWN2 project is being led by TWI and will run to mid-2021 with input from project partners Orsted Wind Power, E-On Climate and Renewables, Scottish Power Renewables, EDF Renewables, Saipem, Metallisation, OCAS and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.
The project aims to assess the use of thermally sprayed aluminium (TSA) as a coating to mitigate corrosion of offshore wind turbine foundations and is applicable to monopiles, jackets and floating foundations.
The consortium will de-risk the use of this technology and provide the industry with clear guidance on both design and manufacture using TSA. A combination of detailed electrochemical measurements and long-term offshore corrosion trials in a range of corrosion environments will aim to provide the confidence and quantitative parameters needed for the industry to specify such a radical change to foundation corrosion protection design. The project will also produce designs for scaling up manufacture using TSA, enabling fast adoption by the entire supply chain.
As a world leader in corrosion expertise and mitigation, TWI is well placed to help promote this upcoming method of protection just as the industry begins to look for answers beyond the traditional paint and anode-based solutions.
You can find out more about TWI’s work in the power industry here.