Prospect on IMO's Performance Standards for Protective Coatings (PSPC) Regulation for Ship's Water Ballast Tanks

In 2006, as a means to minimize early corrosion failure of ships, thus to enhance marine safety, International Maritime Organization (IMO), proposed a mandatory regulation for Performance Standards for the Protective Coatings (PSPC) for ballast tanks of newly built ships to satisfy 15 years of target useful life. In this regulation, several unprecedented strict rules are adopted as minimum, mandatory requirements for protective coatings of ship's water ballast tanks, and all type of ships sailing international sea are subjected to this regulation which is to be effective as early as June of 2008. The PSPC addresses many technical issues in the areas of surface pretreatment (primary and secondary), coating materials, coating application procedure and inspection as well as necessary documentation. The PSPC rules are new and unproven concepts, which calls for rigorous incorporation of reality-based evidences currently available, since there are no practical experiences in terms of the validity of the PSPC rules. There has been much controversy surrounding these regulations and considerable effort has been made by both shipyards and ship owners alike to achieve a performance standard for ballast tank coatings, which is acceptable to all. In this paper, the background and overview of the PSPC rules are given, and several issues in the PSPC are reviewed as a base to achieve robustness of the proposed PSPC, which will serve as a means to minimize early corrosion and to ensure 15 year target useful life of ships.