Gabriella Szabó, Nikolas Vitaliti, and Sebastian Pieters can today look back on a busy and eventful 2024. Among other things, they have won second place at DTU's student conference Green Challenge, where students present sustainable projects to businesspeople and others, and in record time created a prototype for a product that - if all goes well - could make the shipping industry greener.
The product is an antibacterial coating that is applied to the underside of boats and ships. It prevents algae from sticking to the boat, creating less friction and, therefore, less fuel consumption.
The coating is non-toxic, which is extremely important when it is in constant contact with seawater:
“We are developing a more sustainable solution to an existing alternative coating that is used on the market. It was clear to us that the existing technology could be challenged, improved, and made greener,” explains Sebastian Pieters.
Participating in Green Challenge made the three students, of whom Sebastian Pieters and Nikolas Vitaliti are now graduate engineers, even better at pitching their project and gave them useful feedback for the further development of the coating.
“The future vision is to potentially be able to scrape the coating off the ships again and reuse it in new productions of the boat coating. This way, we use fewer resources and make the product even more sustainable,” says Nikolas Vitaliti.
Lab work first, then tests
Gabriella Szabó, Nikolas Vitaliti, and Sebastian Pieters have already started testing the coating appliance on smaller test plates. And they’re also preparing for antifouling tests where the plates are immersed in seawater. If the results of those tests are positive, the following step will be to test the coating on small and medium-sized boats:
“The test season runs from May to October, so we will spend the next few months further developing and improving the coating even more in the lab so that we are fully ready to test it in May 2025,” explains Gabriella Szabó.
The idea for the ship hull coating, which the team calls Renwave, was born out of a course where the students had to take a newly researched technology and turn it into a business idea.
“It's been a steep and hugely enriching learning curve for us. We were thrown into something we had no previous experience with, and yes, it's been chaotic at times, but we've also become good at trusting the process, which is crucial when you're an entrepreneur,” says Nikolas Vitaliti.
