Case study on operating characteristics of gas fueled ship under the conditions of load variation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The use of gas as fuel, particularly liquefied natural gas (LNG), has increased in recent years owing to its lower sulfur and particulate emissions compared to fuel oil or marine diesel oil. LNG is a low temperature, volatile fuel with very low flash point. The major challenges of using LNG are related to fuel bunkering, storing, and handling during ship operation. The main components of an LNG fuel system are the bunkering equipment, fuel tanks, vaporizers/heaters, pressure build-up units (PBUs), and gas controlling units. Low-pressure dual-fuel (DF) engines are predominant in small LNG-powered vessels and have been operating in many small- and medium-sized ferries or LNG-fueled generators.(Tamura, K., 2010; Esoy, V., 2011[1][2]) Small ships sailing at coast or offshore rarely have continuous operation at constant engine load in contrast to large ships sailing in the ocean. This is because ship operators need to change the engine load frequently due to various obstacles and narrow channels. Therefore, controlling the overall system performance of a gas supply system during transient operations and decision of bunkering time under a very poor infrastructure condition is crucial. In this study, we analyzed the fuel consumption, the system stability, and the dynamic characteristics in supplying fuel gas for operating conditions with frequent engine load changes using a commercial analysis program. For the model ship, we selected the 'Econuri', Asia's first LNG-powered vessel, which is now in operation at Incheon Port of South Korea.