Delivering fuel efficiency savings

The £3.6m project will be led by Avid Technology which is based in Cramlington, UK. It will work alongside fellow UK firms RED Marine Limited and Royston Power with France’s Enogia S.A.S. based in Marseille.

Paul Trinick, the ETI’s HDV marine waste heat recovery system project manager, said: “We have established that a 30% reduction in fleet fuel consumption can be achieved by using a combination of innovative technologies, including waste heat recovery systems, with an approximate payback period of just two years.”

“It is important that we now develop and demonstrate this technology to provide confidence to shipping owners and operators that it can deliver tangible efficiencies and savings under real world conditions.”

The solution that the project is targeting is based on improving fuel efficiency by recovering heat energy from the exhaust stream. This reduces the electrical load provided by the ship’s generators and lowers the temperature of the exhaust gas by converting heat to electricity.

Over a period of 26 months, the project should see the waste heat recovery system installed on an offshore support vessel by end of 2018, ahead of a further six months of testing.

The technology being developed in the ETI’s project should be capable of being deployed on a range of marine vessels, including chemical tankers, general cargo and offshore support vessels.

This project, the tender for which was launched last year, is one of a number of demonstrations currently being commissioned by the ETI that seek to reduce emissions and increase the efficiency of the shipping fleet.

ETI is also partnering Teignbridge Propellers International Limited (TPIL) on a £3m project to develop a High Efficiency Propulsion System (HEPS) for ships.