E.ON has announced that it is protecting all 60 steel foundations of the Arkona offshore wind park in the German Baltic Sea with a special anti-corrosion coating. During the 25-year operating period, the metal-dissolving corrosion process is significantly reduced and deposits into the sea are reduced by several hundred tonnes.
E.ON has developed the Thermal Spray Aluminium (TSA) process for coating of the monopiles with engineers from Rambøll Germany in coordination with the competent authorities. EEW and Krebs then developed solutions on behalf of E.ON to implement the process industrially at their locations in Rostock, Germany. During the coating process, a robot with two arc burners sprays a 350 μm thick layer of molten aluminum onto the foundations. The surface is then sealed with resin. The TSA process has so far mainly been used as corrosion protection for smaller steel components under water or for larger components above water. The process is being applied for the first time on an industrial scale for the foundations of the Arkona turbines. They have a maximum length of 81 metres and a diameter of up to almost 8 metres.
