All about Valuable Materials & Hazardous / Toxic Components - The Ship Recycling Process

 Shipping is the main mode of transport for traded goods and about 90% of the traded goods are transported by sea. Although transfer and transport of goods and services are never ending, individual ships last for few decades only. When a ship becomes too expensive and difficult for the owner to repair after about 27 to 30 years of service (depending on the type of ship and its freight market conditions), the shipping companies send the Ship for recycling where all the valuable metals and materials are scrapped out and the toxic ones are disposed off in the safe and environment friendly method. Almost all the ships, including Cruise ships and tankers go for recycling after they reach their end of life.


 

Valuable Components: During the ship recycling process, the valuable materials such as Steel, aluminum, brass and more materials are brought out from the ship which are then sold in the market for reuse. For the steel mills that supply materials to construction industries, old ships are considered as a valuable source of Steel – plates and scrap, where they further use the steel for manufacturing of useful products such as Ingots, Billets, Angles, Channels, TMT etc. Recycling the ships helps to re-circulate these materials into the economy for the reuse.

Hazardous Materials: Along with the valuable materials brought out of the ships, there are hazardous materials such as lead, Mercury, oil sludge, asbestos, bilge water (which contains oil, urine, detergents and solvents) ballast water (which contains plants, viruses and bacteria that are picked up along the journey), TBT (antifouling Paints which contains biocides), PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) and more. These hazardous materials are carefully identified, packed, stored and disposed to authorized agencies. It is very important to handle these hazardous materials systematically and carefully to avoid negative impact on environment and ensuring safety of workers.

During the past 6-7 years rapid strides have been made in development of safe and environmentally friendly processes of ship recycling by various ship recycling facilities around the world. Such processes are mainly based on ship recycling practices as per Hong Kong Convention for Safe and Environmentally Friendly Recycling of Ships, 2009 as well as European Union Ship Recycling Regulation. These are welcome developments.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Wirana for Green Ship Recycling

Image
Wirana was established in 1983 and from then the company has been top hence is now considered as the most successful cash buyer of vessels for recycling . Wirana has reached this position by selling in almost all the markets such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, North China and South China. The cash buyers are the companies that purchase the vessels which have reached the end of their life from the ship owners in 100% cash and then sell it to the recyclers or beaching yards. Cash dealers act as an intermediate between the ship owners and beaching yards hence they never come in contact and remain unknown to each other. So firstly the cash buyer makes a deal with the ship owner and pays the price to them and then again sells it to beaching yards where the ship is sent for dismantling by making a profit. Apart from being the most successful cash buyer of vessels for recycling, Wirana is also the oldest and leading cash buyer of vessels for recycling. It has also earned a place two
Read more

Ship Demolition Cash Buyers- Who are they and About their Roles

Image
The increasing waste and improper management are the crises that all nations throughout the world are facing. Whether it’s agricultural or industrial waste the rise in the disposal of waste materials is at an increasing rate, polluting land, water, and air. According to the studies about 40% of the waste globally ends up in huge garbage and also the ocean will see more plastics into it. The regular efforts have made excellent changes in the disposable culture and had opened up the doors for many alternatives to waste disposal. And among those recycling is widely accepted for waste management.   Similar to any other industry, the shipping industry is the world’s biggest polluters that create waste in huge amount. While ships dispose of in massive proportion of garbage on daily basis and the dispose of the ship after reaches to the end of the life also relives huge proportion of waste that poses a greater danger to the surrounding. In earlier days improper ship disposal particularly wh
Read more

Ship Demolition Process

Image
  Are you aware of the procedure of ship demolition ? If no, then this article is all about it and the steps involved in this procedure. ·          The most basic and common way to dismantle a ship is by breaking it into a number of different parts before breaking it further. If we talk about some of the biggest ship breaking yard in our country, then the process of ship demolition starts at the seashore. A number of ship breaking contractors or cash buyers have their offices at the shipyards along the coasts of the seas.    ·          When a ship is on the verge of breaking down, then it needs to float steadily and hit the beach of the shipping yard where it is being stopped. Once it reaches on the sea shore, the engine of the ship is shut down and the anchor is dropped off so as to make the ship steady. Then the ship breakers who are involved in the ship breaking process start to work after they prepare a plan of how they need to dismantle the ship. ·          And the sea shor
Read more