Wendy Laursen
Contributing Writer-
19 Dec 2024
Spotlight on Ro-Ro Safety
This week at Maritime Reporter...The importance of safety on ro-ro vessels comes under the spotlight.The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch released its report into the engine room fire on board the ro-ro Stena Europe and concluded that the ship’s crew were insufficiently trained to inspect engine fuel systems and the temperature measuring equipment used by the crew to monitor the engine exhaust…
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19 Dec 2024
Op/Ed: It’s Human Nature to Have an Opinion – About LNG
Back in August 2024, in its blog Fact from Fiction: Methane Slip, the industry group SEA-LNG stated: “It’s human nature to have an opinion. And everyone is entitled to one. What’s potentially damaging is when emotive opinions with limited substance are heralded as fact.”This week MSC Cruises had to reconsider what it was saying about LNG.NGO Opportunity Green reports that, following a complaint it made in March 2024…
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16 Dec 2024
The Bridge and Beyond: AI, AR Revolutionize Maritime Decision Making
It’s already possible to have smart decision support on the bridge: With Furuno’s technology, live video imagery of the front view from the vessel has navigation information superimposed on it including heading, AIS data, radar target tracking, object identification, route waypoint and chart information.SEA.AI’s bridge support system can identify larger vessels not fitted with AIS up to a range of 7.5 kilometers (nearly five miles)…
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12 Dec 2024
Weaving the Basket of Solutions
This week at MarineLink…Two reports released this week, one on the upscaling of green hydrogen production, the other on upscaling CCUS, both point to a lack of government initiatives as hindering investment. Without the establishment of regulations and multi-lateral frameworks, big projects are floundering.DNV’s latest Maritime Forecast to 2050 estimates that shipping’s demand for carbon-neutral fuels…
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05 Dec 2024
A Well-to-Wake-Up Call
This week at MarineLink…An Australian Prime Minister once famously (infamously) said: “Life wasn’t meant to be easy.”He could have been talking about the maze of IMO and EU regulations relating to new fuels, especially the concept of well-to-wake emissions.It’s not enough to have a clean-burning engine or even an onboard carbon capture system. Well-to-take emissions, upstream and out of the control of ship operators…
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28 Nov 2024
2050: There’s 9,164 Days to Go
This week at MarineLink…A group of people met at the University of Alaska Fairbanks at the end of October to brainstorm a possible new economy for Alaska and a clean energy source for the world: geologic hydrogen.It’s not that new a concept. Villagers in Bourakébougou, Mali, found a source of geologic hydrogen while unplugging an old water well in 2011. Subsequent scientific research confirmed an extensive hydrogen field in the strata below…
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21 Nov 2024
Greener Fuels, Cleaner Fuels?
This week at MarineLink…The IMO 2020 Sulfur Cap essentially ushered in a new type of fuel - VLSFO. With it came the engine problems caused by off-spec or incompatible fuels as producers grappled with the requirement for providing a sulfur content not exceeding 0.05%. As pointed out in Lloyd’s Register’s 2024 Fuel Quality Report, persistent issues involving cat fines, stability, sulfur content and flash point continue…
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04 Nov 2024
Clean Up Vessels are Smarter than Fishing for Trash
There is a small but global fleet of clean up boats preventing trash from flowing into the ocean. More than that, these battery-powered, autonomous boats are performing a growing range of other tasks.For the developers of Clearbot, the inspiration to be involved in removing trash from waterways arose from personal experience. They had watched villagers in India catching fish in rivers carpeted with…
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31 Oct 2024
Floating Wind and the Taming of Subsea Spaghetti
Preparing for industrialization, the floating offshore wind industry is tackling its unique mooring and cabling challenges.The idea of keeping floating offshore wind platforms in place using dynamic positioning has been considered. The trouble is: it could take up to 80% of the electricity generated by the turbine to do it.So, as Maersk Supply Service said a few years back: In a field of 100 turbines with 4-5 mooring lines each…
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10 Sep 2024
Vessel Ballast Water Management: Getting the Numbers Right
It was never going to be realistic to expect treated ballast water to have zero viable organisms on discharge.The G8 guidelines that define the type approval process for ballast water treatment systems were initially agreed at the IMO before any systems had actually been developed.The IMO had already been working on the issue of invasive species being transferred around the world in ballast water for a couple of decades. It was on the radar back in the 1970s.
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09 Sep 2024
Naval Power: Navies Increasingly Eye Alternative Fuels
Alternative fuels are not top of the list of naval requirements for gensets, but they are inching their way up.The naval world is largely exempt from the decarbonization pressure faced by commercial shipping, but it can’t ignore it entirely. As a famed naval strategist once said: “Fuel stands first in importance of the resources necessary to a fleet.”Navies must therefore consider their fuel supply…
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21 Aug 2024
Ballast Water Technology: Getting the Numbers Right
It was never going to be realistic to expect treated ballast water to have zero viable organisms on discharge.The G8 guidelines that define the type approval process for ballast water treatment systems were initially agreed at the IMO before any systems had actually been developed.The IMO had already been working on the issue of invasive species being transferred around the world in ballast water for a couple of decades. It was on the radar back in the 1970s.
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09 May 2024
Classification and Building the New Fuels Pathway
Long-term initiatives led by classification societies are building the foundation for future fuels uptake.About this time last year, ABS CEO Chris Wiernicki said: “When you look at where we are and the steepness of the curve ahead, the biggest risk is the unintended safety consequences of change.” Class, he says, is built for the intersection between technology, safety and regulations and must be prepared.Work is underway.
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25 Apr 2024
New Cranes & Offshore Wind Efficiency
The end may be in sight, but the race for bigger cranes is still having an impact on offshore wind project efficiency.The industry has already felt the need for upgrading crane lifting capacity on existing offshore wind installation vessels: NOV is upgrading the cranes on Cadeler’s existing O-class wind turbine installation vessels (WTIVs), and a gantry crane extension will soon make Van Oord’s Svanen one of the largest floating heavy-lift installation vessels.It’s a newbuild phenomenon too.
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24 Apr 2024
Simulators Track our Changing Relationship with Technology
Simulation-based training has its whole-of-ship/whole-of-team scenarios, but zooming in, the industry is now working on more specific targets.We have a close relationship with technology, evidenced by, for example, the phones we are estimated to unlock around 50-80 times a day. It has changed us. Half the people surveyed in a 2022 King’s College London study said that they feel like their attention span is shorter than it used to be.
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19 Apr 2024
Simulators Track our Changing Relationship with Technology
Simulation-based training has its whole-of-ship/whole-of-team scenarios, but zooming in, the industry is now working on more specific targets.We have a close relationship with technology, evidenced by, for example, the phones we are estimated to unlock around 50-80 times a day. It has changed us. Half the people surveyed in a 2022 King’s College London study said that they feel like their attention span is shorter than it used to be.
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21 Feb 2024
Demand for Maritime Shaft Generators Increasing
30 years ago shaft generators with PTI capability kept container ships sailing at top speed. That purpose gone, PTI/PTO is making a new comeback in more cargo shipping segments, this time for reducing emissions.Retrofitting a shaft generator is not an insignificant undertaking. Around 50 tons of equipment needs to be installed into the engineroom through a hole in the hull. A new section of shaft is…
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15 Feb 2024
Is Stern Tube Damage Declining?
It might be easy to blame EALs, but the ongoing causes of stern tube damage are varied, and possibly declining.Environmentally Acceptable lubricants (EALs) gained market traction with the introduction of US VGP regulations in 2013. Since then, DNV has observed two major trends. The first, starting in 2013 was early life damage, either during sea trials or within the first five years of operation, where aft stern tube bearings typically failed under extreme load conditions.
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23 Jan 2024
Aiming for Zero Waste Discharge to Sea
Advanced water treatment systems are just the start of the cruise industry’s circular waste processing ambitions.Advanced wastewater treatment systems (AWTS) were revolutionary in their day. Indeed, they still are today, but with 77% of the CLIA fleet (202 ships) already using them, and another 40 specified for vessels on order, even more ambitious waste management is coming.Martin Shutler, Principal Engineer…
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15 Dec 2023
The Problem with Reducing Underwater Radiated Noise
If the global commercial fleet reduced its speed by 10%, it would reduce underwater radiated noise by 40%, but nothing’s ever that simple.The main thing holding the shipping industry back from reducing its underwater radiated noise (URN) is not a lack of appropriate technology. It’s argued that many of the technologies being implemented today to reduce fuel consumption also reduce noise. So, the noise reductions could essentially come at no net cost to the shipowner…
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