Biofouling on large vessels, including commercial shipping tankers and naval vessels, carries substantial costs, largely due to an increase in the quantity of fuel that must be consumed to overcome the frictional drag caused by the presence of organisms on ship hulls. Additional costs arise from the need to place the vessels in dry dock for cleaning and repainting. In a 2011 report, MP Schultz and colleagues in the Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis, MD) estimated overall cost associated with hull fouling for the Navy's coating, cleaning, and fouling level in 2011 to be $56 million for the entire DDG-51 class of naval vessels, or $1 billion over 15 years (Biofouling; 2011 Jan; 27⑴:87-98. doi: 10.1080/08927014.2010.542809). Many paint companies have been investing in R&D efforts to develop cost-effective, environmentally compatible solutions for this problem. Traditional biofouling solutions have included the use of biocides, which use toxins to kill organisms that try to attach to the hull. More recent coatings based on silcone and fluoro- polymer technology provide ships hulls with very low surface tension, which prevents organisms from attaching. Evonik recently developed a new class of raw materials for coatings that makes ship hulls "invisible" to microorganisms.
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