How a small MSME unit helped the Indian Navy battle its corrosion woes in painting of warships

A MSME based in an obscure corner of the country in the border town of Jodhpur in Rajasthan achieved a major breakthrough in Indigenous technology. It has successfully completed a turnkey assignment of first-of-its-kind abrasive impact blasting cum painting room with climate control system at Indian Navy's ship building yard at GRSE, Kolkata. The facility has been handed over for commercial production. The project was conceived by the shipyard to overcome the problem of corrosion and poor quality coating on naval ships due to deterioration in impact blast cleaned surface resulting from interregnum between blasting and painting and oxidation corrosion deteriorating the surface particularly during rainy season when relative humidity is high and entire ship building operation literally comes to a halt. Also, due to change in ship building technology in terms of fabrication of modules offsite and their assembly at dry dock and difficulty in handling such large and heavy objects from blasting room to paint room, this unique facility was envisaged and a global tender was floated.

Synco Industries Limited provided a unique design for handling blasting and painting in the same room with independent dust collection and fume extraction systems and adequate air changes and air washing arrangement to maintain the level of VOC's (volatile organic compounds) below 10 per cent of permissible lowest explosive limits to provide a very safe and effective system.

The climate control facility provided is capable of maintaining relative humidity below 55-60 per cent while maintaining temperature at a pleasant level between 26? -28?C during blasting and painting cycles and raising it to 50?C during baking cycle. The beauty of the system and technological breakthrough lies in the unique design of this Indian MSME wherein 90 per cent of the conditioned air is recycled resulting in huge saving of space and capital expenditure as also the regular operating cost. This was a unique design developed ground up this MSME and shared with GRSE providing both 'no how' and 'no why'. So much so the entire complexion of the technological specifications in this global tender where international industry leaders and multinational companies were participating with their design concepts changed.

Synco's design was approved and all the players had to bid based on this design and the Synco could win this order due to its price competitiveness. It was the only Indian company to technically qualify and finally win the order and execute it successfully on a turnkey basis providing complete retinue of equipments relating to blasting, painting, abrasive media management and recycling, pollution control, climate control, safety wears, painting equipment, rubber lining, compressed air equipments, plumbing, cabling, electrical controls etc. The climate control system provided is capable of handling and conditioning 90000 cfm air. The project is unique and the only one of its kind in the country as of date. It is a technology demonstrator and can prove to be a boon to the shipping industry in particular and other industries i.e. infrastructure and others manufacturing large and heavy items which are difficult to move and require protection against corrosion through this process.

With the successful execution of this project, technology in this field has taken a quantum jump making climatically controlled tunnel linked/separated blasting and painting room facilities obsolete.

This unique technology not only provides saving in capital cost and the biggest advantage is need of handling of non handling of difficult and risky to handle large and heavy objects and improving the effectiveness of coating by not allowing any deterioration in blasted surface while the painting gets carried out. The whole project is unique and is one more feather in the cap of Indian engineering industry. What was Nano to auto engineering, this is to surface engineering.

(Synco Industries Limited, 16-A (III), Heavy Industrial Area, Jodhpur, Rajasthan 342 003, Tel: 0291-2741272/2742077/79. Fax: 91-291-2742557, Email: mail@synco.co.in)