armchairadmiral 411 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Be a good thing for the EPA to have a look at what antifouling is on the thousands of ships visiting NZ each year before hassling the few thousand pleasure boats using 4 / 8 litres each & mainly sitting in marinas.Particularly 'flag of convenience vessels like 'Rena".Must be thousands of litres on her- probably TBT based too ?But it's much easier to justify the EPA existence by picking on the little guy,And maybe have a look at Roundup & all those other 'inert' poisons used daily in vast quanities..... Link to post Share on other sites
Atom Ant 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Whats the best yacht antifouling available or home brewable in NZ? I'm only guessing here, but I would think that making your own antifouling would be a bit like making your own moonshine whiskey. Alot of it was barely drinkable, every now & then someone made an incredibly good brew, but quite often the damn stills blew up killing people in the process. Another guess is that the money you spend developing your own "homebrew" would be better spent just buying some off the shelf. There are endless threads in tech talk on the best anitfouling but no clear winner has yet emerged IMHO. Link to post Share on other sites
Grinna 2 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 There are endless threads in tech talk on the best anitfouling but no clear winner has yet emerged IMHO. The problem is that there isn't one "best" antifouling compound because different areas will promote different types of marine growth and different vessels need different preparations. A high speed planing launch for instance is not going to go well with ablative antifouling paints because it'll all be washed off in half a season, whereas the hard antifoulant paints just don't suit some conditions either. In an effort to get around the "heavy metal" misnomers or the debate about it anyway, there is a tendency now toward calling some of these contaminants "priority pollutants". There are fish hooks in that term as well, however, technically they have been given a priority status and they're pollutants (to a degree). Take your points about copper Dr W .... the common estuarine mudsnail Amphibola crenata uses copper compounds to transport oxygen around its body (as opposed to iron compounds used by humans and many other critters). This fact, though it has been pointed out on many occasions has not stopped the Auckland Council (and the ARC before them) from demanding that Amphibola be used as biological monitoring tools for copper contamination in the Manukau Harbour. Surprisingly, Amphibola always seem to have quite a bit of copper in their tissue samples Link to post Share on other sites
Atom Ant 0 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Howebrew means adding X to an existing product to give it some mojo. Mojo baby! That subject has been debated at length too - the "turbo'ing" of antifouling. Again with no provable positive outcomes. If you troll through the tech talk archives you will find many threads on boosting antifoul performance. Well good luck with that. If you have any success let us all know Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 There are three main points to consider with how an Antifouling coating works. One is the copper(if used), the biocide and the erosion speed. By mixing in other additives, you could destroy 1, 2 or all three of these "features". These coatings are a fine balance and the formulae has been developed in a lab for the best performace. simpoly put, if it does not perform, they are not going to get continued sales. If they can produce an AF that outperforms opposition coatings, then they will continue to remain in business. So in other words, the manufacturer has spent a few mill on making his product the best he can and for the customer to then put in his own secret recipie, is wasting money and product because they are likely stuff up how the coating was intended to work. Link to post Share on other sites
DrWatson 381 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Copper is NOT a heavy metal. In fact, the very term "heavy metal" is only accurate in terms of a guitar and drum heavy type of "music" usually accompanied by unintelligible lyrics barked by some atonal moron. Copper is a first row transition metal, and it is trace element like many elements in this row A small correction. Transitional metals are indeed considered heavey metals. Copper is first row transition. A 3d metal. It's second and third row transition metals, and the lanthanides and actinides, which are considered to be "heavy" by chemists and bio-inorganic chemists. ie the people who study metal sequestration in biological systems. There are toxic forms of first row transition metals though. Just like there are toxic forms of carbon and nitrogen, and pretty much everything else in this universe. The general public doesn't know the difference between an ion and an atom however, so basically we're screwed. The fact that the ARC apparently used an organism which has natural levels of copper as a functioning system is possibly suggesting they couldn't detect it at high enough levels in anything else to cause them concern. Once again highlighting my point about people and legislators in positions of power that far exceed their competence. I've seen people measure trace levels of elements and handling their samples wearing gloves which contain talc. Man those people found all sorts of things they weren't expecting... What's the deal with copper sheathing? Are we still allowed to do that? Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 From YNZ Thanks David- There is some good feedback on the issue there. It would be ideal if people feel strongly about this in any way they should submit to the EPA directly. Here is the contact information: Environmental Protection Authority reassessments@epa.govt.nz P O Box 131Wellington. Ph +64 4 916 2426 Fax +64 4 914 0433 I’ve also attached the original Fact Sheet sent to YNZ from the EPA. Talk to you soon Kristine Lederis I Communications Manager Support and Development Officer- Sailors with a Disability DDI 09 361 4023 I Email kristine@yachtingnz.org.nz Mobile 021 871 301 I http://www.yachtingnz.org.nz Antifouling reassessment fact sheet.pdf Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 which are considered to be "heavy" by chemists and bio-inorganic chemists. ie the people who study metal sequestration in biological systems. Arr well you see, that's the problem right there. These Chemists and such are currently arguing the point and cannot agree and hence they are in the process of trying to change the way and the what we call heavey Metals. Some are indeed calling transitional metals like copper, heavey, but ofcourse, some are arguing no. And just as you said, the only real "heavey metal" is a Music type. As you know, there is no weight classification to say that all metals under X shall be called light metals and anything over shall be deemed heavey. Link to post Share on other sites
Atom Ant 0 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 which are considered to be "heavy" by chemists and bio-inorganic chemists. ie the people who study metal sequestration in biological systems. Arr well you see, that's the problem right there. These Chemists and such are currently arguing the point and cannot agree and hence they are in the process of trying to change the way and the what we call heavey Metals. Some are indeed calling transitional metals like copper, heavey, but ofcourse, some are arguing no. And just as you said, the only real "heavey metal" is a Music type. As you know, there is no weight classification to say that all metals under X shall be called light metals and anything over shall be deemed heavey. OK just so you boffins understand - WTF are you talking about? Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 Well....honestly, there is really no clear definition and when one of the defining bodies try to, they all disagree, manily because you can not draw lines through anywhere. However, it could looked at losley this way(and I do mean losely. Our bodies need tracelements to carry out certain functyions. For instance, the most common being Iron in our blood which carries the Oxygen around. There are some animal species that use Copper to do the same, but that is aside from this. Very losely speaking, a "heavey metal" tends to be a group that is extremely toxic to us and we do not need any trace off it to keep us alive or healthy by carrying out an important bodily function. Metals such as Murcury, Uranium, Lead etc. One thing that does tend to set these metals apart is that they are often accumulative in animals including ourselves. Link to post Share on other sites
PaulR 3 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 Once upon a time, there was water, fresh or salt. Life was simple. With so called progress, we now have distilled, ionised, filtered, flouride, recycled, enhanced and added minerals, vitemans and thousands of different bottled waters. I thought Heavy Water was a German invention in WWII in Norway and that heavy metal was a similar discovery when extra electrons, protons and other nuclear particles were added. Hence HEAVY metal was really only those higher in the periodic table e.g. Uranium where flavours are U234, U235, U237 etc. weigh more with those extra electrons now added. Ordinary copper was still just ordinary. I liked my simple life Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 I liked my simple life Are you intentionally trolling for a wind up or is that just a slip? I have a mate who knows things and shall remain nameless due to the following and what he does for a crust. He turboed his anti-fouling and got 5 years out of it before he had to recoat and that was on a planing launch. The stuff was magnificent but he does mention how he wouldn't let anyone swim near his boat for the 1st year and his boats bum glowed for nearly 18months Knot too sure if that last bit is just a wind up or knot, pretty sure it is, but I do know for sure it lasted 5 years. So it can easily be done, the extra goodies that wasn't in the normal mix cost him $7 and that was 7-8 years ago. He won't say what that was though apart from it is easily available and used extensively in horticulture. No I did knot say I have 8lts in my shed, that would or maybe naughty so that why I don't Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 and that heavy metal was a similar discovery when extra electrons, protons and other nuclear particles were added. Umm actually that has never happened. At least not here on Earth. It requires Nuclear Fusion and the only Nuclear Fusion Bomb ever let off almost wipped the US Island where it was tested off the face of the Planet. But that was fusing Hydrogen Atoms together. Not even our own Sun is big and hot enough to fuse Metals to their next heavier element. I think our Sun stops at around Carbon, but could be wrong on that one. It takes a Super big Sun to to start producing Metals and it is within these masive Super Suns that all metal on Earth has been initially produced. Once a Star burns up all it's energy, it goes Super nova and blasts all it's guts out into space. That Star Dust is what then makes new Planets and Suns in which our solar system and Earth is one of. Link to post Share on other sites
DrWatson 381 Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 We're kind of getting off the topic with the discussion about what constitutes heavy a heavy metal and the definitions of isotopes etc.. But here are some rules for what defines an element and an isotope: Add or remove electrons to anything and it becomes an ion. Quite different to it's element and charged. Add or remove a proton from an atom's nucleus and it changes from one element into another. Add or remove a neutron (or many) from an atom's nucleus and it becomes an isotope of the same element. Some are stable, some are not. So water is H2O, 2 hydrogens and an oxygen. heavy water is where the hydrogens each have an extra neutron. A look at the densities of all the transition metals shows that for the most part a general trend is that the first row are under 9g per cm3. The 2nd and 3rd row are over except for Y, Zr, Nb and Cd. Few of the lanthanides are denser than 9. Wheels' definition is not too bad, that we often call something a metal heavy if it is bio accumulative. We should make a bulb out of Osmium ... 22.65 g/cm3.... Link to post Share on other sites
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