On Friday, July 16, 2021, the Thunderbird 2 (TB2) was christened in the center of Rotterdam by Mirelle Pennings, Director of Commercial Banking at Rabobank. The TB2 is the second work vessel of Fleet Cleaner, a green scale-up from Delft that uses self-developed robots to clean ship hulls from fouling such as algae and mussels. It is the world’s first vessel that can clean tankers explosion-proof during loading and unloading.
After seven months of construction, the moment finally arrived on Friday: Fleet Cleaner’s second work vessel was christened. What makes this ship unique is that the accompanying cleaning robot, as well as the crane and all equipment on the deck, are ATEX certified, making it explosion-proof, explains Alex Noordstrand, CEO of Fleet Cleaner. “We followed the guidelines that also apply to tankers: from sensors that measure gas to the crew accommodation that is overpressurized.”
As the underwater hull grows, ships consume more fuel in the long term. This not only incurs high costs but also adds an extra burden to the environment. Fleet Cleaner’s cleaning robot, which is operated from a work vessel, solves these issues by cleaning the ship’s hull during loading and unloading. A clean hull provides a ship owner about ten percent fuel savings, which translates to about 5,000 tons of CO2 savings per year per ship. For tank storage company Vopak, this was reason enough to participate in a pilot project with the explosion-proof installation. Successfully: multiple tankers have now been cleaned during loading and unloading, and the service is now commercially available.
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Due to the corona guidelines, it was a modest christening ceremony, where Mirelle Pennings from Rabobank, in the presence of the founders, smashed a bottle of champagne against the ship. “As Rabobank, we have been closely involved with the TU Delft Campus and all the initiatives that arise there to help entrepreneurs grow sustainably for decades,” says Mirelle Pennings, Director of Commercial Banking at Rabobank. “Also at the RoboHouse field lab, where Fleet Cleaner operates. In this way, we come into contact early with technology-driven companies and are prepared when these companies experience a growth spurt. Fleet Cleaner is a great example of this.”
Owners Cornelis de Vet and Alex Noordstrand are satisfied. “We think it is important that tankers can now also use our services. If you consider that 90 percent of world trade takes place via international shipping, then cleaning all those ships yields enormous climate benefits.” Fleet Cleaner expects to add a third work vessel to their fleet by the end of this year and is also working on expanding their services to global ports such as Singapore.
The pictures were taken by Wouter Slits and the text is written by Christel Don.
