Prepared For The Voyage Ahead

The first part of the treatment process occurs on a preservation line, which incorporates the different stages of blasting and priming. On the preservation line, sheets and profiles are thoroughly blast cleaned and provided with a temporary corrosion protection coating. Along with the external transport unit, a preservation line consists of a pre-heating oven, a pass-through blasting machine (roller conveyor type), a painting unit and a drying tunnel with its associated slat conveyor. Wheelabrator is the only company that offers roller conveyors and preservation lines that can blast 5m wide steel plate at high quality - and we're working on larger sizes.

After the steel sheets have been cleaned, primed, controlled and given a unique ID number, they are conveyed to a fabrication area where huge ship sections are built.

At this stage the welded seams of the fabricated sections must be cleaned (blasted) and given a protective coating in airblast rooms in order to obtain a corrosion protection certificate.

A weight of 100 tonnes or more for such a ship component is commonplace.

In the following stage, the final stage of the corrosion prevention process, the fabrications must be painted, this is carried out in huge paint rooms.

When ships are maintained and repaired in dry docks, sections and newly welded seams must be cleaned and given corrosion protection.

Wheelabrator offers a range of Closed Circuit (Open Blast) equipment for this purpose.