Giant robot arms with waterjets can slice up retired ships, but can they clean up the shipbreaking industry?
It is chopping up the hull of a large ship. The structure, which withstood the power of the sea for decades, yields easily to the cutting jet. Before long, the robot has sliced out a big rectangle of steel."You can have robots starting at the bow and the stern, and two points in the middle, and working towards each other," says Bryce Lawrence, operations director at Leviathan.
"Compared to traditional ship recycling, we're very, very low carbon," says Mr Lawrence as he explains how machinery at Leviathan's Stralsund facility on Germany's Baltic coast will be powered by electricity, not on-site fossil fuels, and that recovered steel will be transported to mills around Europe on electrified trains. Commercial operations are expected to start in the coming months, he adds.
"Somebody has to approach the bomb, put the manipulating system on," says Till Weber, ANT AG's general manager, "then go as far away as possible." Mercifully, in such situations the jet can be operated from a distance of half a kilometer. It is currently in use in Ukraine, adds Mr Weber.When it comes to ship cutting, such a system requires far fewer workers than traditional shipbreaking does, and Mr Lawrence argues that it could one day complete the job much faster.
Mr Lawrence explains that the Stralsund facility will feature a containment area designed to capture jet water and toxic substances that have been blasted off the ships. Once carefully decontaminated, this water can be reused for further cutting. "We de-Lego a ship," says a spokeswoman, explaining that the idea is to safely disassemble each vessel, part by part. The firm will evaluate waterjet, plasma and hydraulic mechanical cutters in the future.Recycling ships has been a dirty business for too long, says Ingvild Jenssen, founder and director of Shipbreaking Platform, a non-governmental organization that monitors the industry.
Two of the structures have since been broken up at an EU-approved yard in Turkey. " has not been dismantled and recovered yet as it was only exported to Turkey in May 2023," says Colin Morrow, of Sepa.
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