The World Ocean Council (WOC) – the lead GloFouling Project Partner for engaging the global ocean business and investment community – invites interested parties to the GloFouling Webinar: “Managing Corrosion and Biofouling on the Offshore Monopile Supports for Wind Turbines [1],” 5 May 2020 at 3:00pm (BT) / 10:00am ET.

The webinars are part of the GEF-UNDP-IMO GloFouling Partnerships Project which is working to better understand and tackle the multi-sectoral challenge of biofouling and its impacts on marine biodiversity and the Sustainable Blue Economy.

Two of the major challenges to operating in marine environments are biofouling and corrosion. Biofouling is considered to be undesirable, however these organisms provide important ecosystem services and there are opportunities to design marine structures that work in synergy with the environment.

This webinar presents research that investigated a new concept for offshore wind monopile design to address corrosion within monopiles interiors and also create habitat for marine life. The approach introduces perforations that promote the free circulation of seawater, control corrosion by conventional cathodic protection design and increase habitat for marine life. Test results demonstrated that cathodically protected perforated steel pipe creates an environment with improved corrosion mitigation, water chemistry and a diverse population of settled and mobile organisms.

At a time when the health of marine environments is under increasing pressure, there is an opportunity to design structures that enhance local ecologies and provide ecosystem services in terms of fisheries, nutrient cycling and carbon fixation.

Click here [1] to register for the webinar.
The webinar is open to all participants free of charge.