Last modified: 2015-05-22
Abstract
Minimisation of fuel consumption is one top priority of ship owners and operators. Several actions aimed at reducing ship propulsive fuel consumption can be taken, both acting on ship operational management and performing retrofit interventions: hull cleaning, silicon painting, reblading can lead to high percentages of fuel saving, with different costs.
In order to support the on-board personnel decisions regarding ship operations and to allow the energy managers to evaluate the effectiveness of both the adopted strategies and the retrofits, CETENA developed the Performance Monitoring (PM) system: an automated and unmanned HW/SW data collector which monitors all relevant parameters on board and provides customized information on ship propulsive performances.
PM system capabilities can be expanded with the Optimum Trim Estimator (OTE) module. OTE is a Decision Support System which provides the ship Master with real time information on the optimum dynamic trim to be adopted depending on ship speed and displacement: against all actions, the adoption of an optimum trim during navigation is probably the one characterized by the best benefits/cost ratio: it can lead to 2-4% reduction of fuel consumption depending on ship type. The OTE module, analysing the dynamic trim along the trip continuously monitored by the PM system, detects in real time eventual significant gaps between the actual trim and the optimum one and allows the on board personnel to adopt countermeasures to restore the optimum trim condition minimizing the fuel consumption.
The PM&OTE system is completed by a data analysis software, which enables end users to evaluate and compare ship propulsive performances along ship life: the possibility to automatically split data into voyages, to filter them according to several parameters and to build different speed-power curves, allow the Energy Manager to critically compare different operational management strategies and to assess the benefit of retrofit interventions.