Seaspan Ship Management opts for Alfa Laval Aalborg integrated steam solution to support low sulphur compliant fuel usage, says an article published in Seatrade Maritime News.
The integrated steam boiler plant
Alfa Laval is supplying an integrated steam boiler plant comprising :
- oil-fired steam production,
- waste heat recovery,
- advanced control and
- connectivity.
This is to be installed on eight Seaspan owned large container ships.
Seaspan opted to use compliant fuels to comply with IMO 2020, however, like most containerships the vessels only had a single oil-fired boiler and a waste heat recovery boiler on board. This provides no redundancy, which is problematic when using sulphur-compliant fuels.
Arvin Dsouza, fleet manager at Seaspan Ship Management said, “The composition of low-sulphur fuels was uncertain when we first decided for them, but it quickly became clear that high paraffin content would be an issue.”
How to overcome the issue?
To avoid wax formation, the fuel temperature has to stay above the pour point at all times.
But the existing boiler solution on the above-mentioned vessels can’t guarantee the required steam capacity as these vessels do not have heating coils in all the designated fuel oil tanks and rely on a shifter system.
“So we chose to work with Alfa Laval, who found the answers we needed.”
Fuel heating through steam coils
Alfa Laval proposed rebuilding the existing oil-fired boiler and adding a new Alfa Laval Aalborg oil-fired boiler. This will support fuel heating by means of steam coils in all tanks.
Implementation of the set-up for the first Seaspan vessel is in Spring this year with the remaining installations running through 2020 and 2021.
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Source: Seatrade Maritime News
