According to UK engine services company Royston Limited, in the current commercial environment, ship owners are actively looking for ways to reduce operating costs.
As bunker prices are an operator’s biggest expense after labour it is vital to find ways of controlling them. There are plenty of money saving ideas out there but the company points out that there is little point in flying kites off the bow or using a slippery antifouling if the ship’s engines are running inefficiently. Royston says that for the past 30 years it has been helping operators meet this need by providing a global repair and maintenance service that can restore the performance levels of diesel engines of any age.
One of the biggest factors affecting bunker consumption is the way in which an engine is run and this is why the Newcastle-based company developed its enginei fuel monitoring system. This technology provides a master with the data needed to run a ship’s engines as efficiently as circumstances will allow while also sharing the same information with technical staff ashore.
The management of ship operator James Fisher Everard was among the first to recognise the need for fuel efficiency and in 2009 the company began a trial of the Royston system. It works by continuously measuring fuel consumption in relation to engine power output and the GPS location of the vessel itself. Flow meters are fitted to each engine to provide the fuel consumption data and these give the ship’s master a clear visual presentation on the bridge of its usage. However, the key feature of enginei is that the same data is also relayed to the company headquarters where staff can see a track of the ship’s voyage on Google Earth combined with a graphical presentation of its fuel consumption at every point along the route. Data collected by the system enables average fuel consumption to be calculated and for comparisons to be made between different ship types in the company’s fleet. The simple bridge display shows the most economical engine speed while users in head office can use the route projection to easily interpret how the ship’s fuel consumption varies throughout its route. Crews quickly recognise how unnecessary speed can increase bunker usage while management can also become aware of the impact that their instructions to a master can have on the fuel economy of his ship.
The coastal clean products tanker Shannon Fisher was one of the first James Fisher Everard vessels to complete an installation of the enginei system. Built by Damen Shipyards in 2006, and powered by an MaK 8M25C four-stroke main engine, the ship regularly carries cargoes such as petrol and kerosene to destinations around Europe. In trials, a fuel consumption baseline was established before the installation of the enginei system which then used flow meters to monitor fuel consumption throughout the trial. By enabling the ship’s master to operate at the most fuel efficient speeds it was found that the enginei installation indicated that he had achieved fuel savings of 4.5% when under ballast and 3% when loaded.
Following the success of the trial, enginei systems are now fitted to 13 clean products tankers in the company’s fleet and David Whitehead, project manager for James Fisher Everard, said he was optimistic that enginei will benefit his company. “Now the system is up and running on the majority of targeted vessels, using the trend analysis we are able to monitor fuel consumption of the vessel to make comparisons between same class vessels on similar routing to identify potential savings in cost by tuning the power output of the main engine”, he said.
“Ship’s command was originally trained in the operation of the enginei system and has now become familiar with its operation and the ease of parameter input thus we realise that as time progresses that it will become a useful tool in fine tuning the operation and cost efficiency of the vessels,” said Mr Whitehead.
Royston claims that by combining well-maintained engines with a practical and cost effective means of monitoring their operation, it is able to provide a formula that is now being applied globally onboard some 50 ships. The company is introducing new technical developments such as new highly accurate coriolis flow meters, which it says advance the performance of the enginei system. All users are said to have found that it is an uncomplicated and straightforward solution that can be easily installed on vessels of any age, and that enginei can soon pay for itself by assisting operators with better management of their bunker costs.