Fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) waste ships are on the rise.

Fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) waste ships are on the rise.
The increasing number of illegally dumped fishing boats is becoming a social problem, and as full-scale treatment is urgently needed, research and development of treatment equipment and demonstration tests are being carried out one after another.
Mitsubishi Senko received an order from Marino Forum 21 for a demonstration plant to treat FRP fishing boats and other fishery waste, installed it at the New Nagasaki Fishing Port (Nagasaki City) in March, and started trial operation. Nagasaki City commissioned the company to conduct a demonstration project for the full-scale treatment of FRP waste vessels, and the project cost 200 million yen. The plant has a processing capacity of 0.5 tons per day, and uses low-temperature heating of around 700 degrees Celsius (ordinary incinerators treat at a high temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius) to gasify the resin only, leaving the glass fiber without melting it. During the incineration process, no harmful tar, soot, or foul odor is generated, and the furnace is not damaged by the adhesion of molten glass fiber.
In November 1994, MHI installed a 2-ton/day test plant at its Shimonoseki Shipyard and Machinery Works, and has since succeeded in processing the gasification process without producing secondary pollution such as soot and odors. The company intends to promote the use of the system as a waste treatment device for FRP fishing boats, leisure boats, bathtubs, Styrofoam, etc. In the future, the company plans to use the system for FRP fishing boats and leisure boats.
Meanwhile, a cross-industrial exchange group in Shimonoseki City developed a low-pollution, low-cost incineration plant for FRP waste boats and conducted a demonstration test in March. The main feature of this equipment is that it can incinerate entire vessels up to 6.5 m in length without the need to remove engines, screws, and other outfitting.
The incinerator is approximately 7 m long, 2.3 m wide, 5.5 m high, and weighs about 16 tons. The primary combustion chamber, which holds the hull, is approximately 2 m in diameter and 6.5 m long, and burns the hull at a low temperature of around 600 degrees Celsius. Toxic gases generated in the primary combustion chamber are completely burned in secondary and tertiary furnaces, and dust is removed by cyclones to control pollution. The glass fiber from the combustion residue is reused for road pavement, etc., and the metal is given to a specialized company for recycling. Other advantages include fuel savings due to low-temperature combustion, compact and lightweight, and the primary furnace and other parts can be separated and moved even with a 10-ton truck. The development of this plant was undertaken by members of the FRP subcommittee of the cross-industry exchange group of the Shimonoseki branch of the Kyushu Marine Equipment Association, which includes eight small and medi
um-sized Shimonoseki-based companies (Toyo S.E.: outfitting products; Okamoto Ironworks: watertight doors and manholes; Kikutani Engineering: labor-saving equipment for marine products; Kansai Electric: automatic control equipment, ship-related (trading companies: Shimosen, Shimonoseki Diesel Shokai, Hakudensha, and Hamaya Shokai). As a project commissioned by the Small and Medium Enterprise Corporation of Japan and subsidized by Yamaguchi Prefecture and Shimonoseki City, approximately 26.5 million yen was invested in raw material costs alone, and the subcommittee has been working on this project since October 1993. The subcommittee will start sales of the vessel at about 50 million yen per unit, and will continue to work on the development and research of an offshore incineration system and automatic control system, which were the original objectives of the project.
FRPs account for 40% of all illegally dumped vessels.
FRP vessels, which began to spread about 30 years ago, are now mainly small fishing boats, motorboats called pleasure boats, and yachts. There are currently 300,000 pleasure boats and more than 100,000 fishing boats, with more than 30,000 vessels scrapped alone, and the number is expected to increase by more than 10,000 every year. According to the Japan Coast Guard, there were 1,573 illegally dumped vessels in Japan in 1994, of which 618 were FRP vessels, accounting for about 40%.
On April 1, the JCG began nationwide affixing an "Orange Card" to ships in order to strengthen its crackdown on illegal dumping of derelict vessels. If the owner of a ship with this sticker does not dispose of it properly within one month, he or she may be arrested for violation of the Law Concerning Prevention of Marine Pollution and Maritime Disasters (Marine Pollution Prevention Law). It is clear that when ISO 14000, the international standard for environmental management and auditing, is issued in April 1996, shipbuilders and related manufacturers will be held accountable for their environmental management.
Since pleasure boats are currently classified as general waste and fishing boats as industrial waste, there is an urgent need for measures to dispose of abandoned fishing FRP vessels. Incidentally, the treatment of FRP fishing vessel scraps is also an issue to be considered in the fishery waste recycling project.