For many years, dry abrasive blast-cleaning has been the most widely used surface preparation technique, particularly within the ship-building and repairing industry. This method (often called sand-blasting) is based on the propulsion of an abrasive material against the cleaning surface, through a high-speed stream of compressed air. Recently, such blast cleaning methods have been brought into question because of their negative environmental impact. This has been caused mainly by the abrasive material utilized (sand). The strict environmental regulations brought in as a result, have restricted or made uneconomical such open-air blasting operations throughout Greece and the rest of the EU. In recent years, a great number of international industrial research projects have been developed to reduce or eliminate this environmental impact, involving developing alternative abrasives ( olivine, garnet, steel grit etc) and new surface preparation methods (eg. Ultra High Pressure water-jetting, water blast-cleaning, vacuum blasting etc.). However, it is currently not easy to discover how widely these methods are being used within Greece, the degree of their technical or economic viability, nor the extent of their environmental impact. A partnership consortium was therefore set up to promote the investigation of the parameters of these question, and to promote new environmentally-friendly blast-cleaning techniques. This represented an important public/private collaboration between the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in their Laboratory of Mining Technology (LMT), an industrial partner (Neorion Shipyard), and backed by the Department of Mineral Enrichment Technology of the Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploitation (IGME).