Assessment of tannin antifouling coatings by scanning electron microscopy

Abstract

It is well known that during the first minutes of the immersion of any substrate in marine environments microbial colonization takes place. This event will condition the attachment of other more complex organisms and the substrate biodeterioration with concomitant loss of its functionality. The aim of this work was to assess antifouling coatings performance at early stages of immersion, in natural and artificial sea water, observing the surface condition, by scanning electron microscope (SEM), in order to predict possible results in long time immersion tests. The use of short time tests to predict future behavior is useful to adjust formulations, reduce testing time and economics cost. In this research antifouling (AF) coatings formulated with two “quebracho” tannin derivatives were chosen to be evaluated by short and long time tests. One of this coatings possessed in a longer service life, until 10 months of exposure, and at the same time, this resulted correlated with surface analysis at early stages of immersion by SEM.