Keeping an eye on the engines at Seawork

Technical manager Robin Shaw points out that, ‘Diagnosing and rectifying problems on modern electronically controlled engines can be a huge challenge to even the most experienced engineers.’ And, it has to be said, experienced engineers themselves are in short supply.

This factor has meant Royston saw the need for a proactive ‘early warning’ system that works through a number of sensors. These take in data measuring exhaust, coolant temperatures, oil pressure, heat exchanger efficiency, load, rpm and even turbocharger and shaft vibration.

Launched in December 2008, Royston’s enginei system is a complete diesel engine monitoring solution which can be applied to any engine from the smallest, oldest generators up to the newest, most powerful engines from manufacturers such as Caterpillar, GE, and Wartsila. Building on several years’ academic research and development into the optimisation of ships’ energy requirements at the University of Newcastle, Royston have developed a fuel consumption reduction tool which operates on the same core hardware as the enginei engine monitoring system.

Enginei not only flags up (in an easily interpreted way) potentially expensive maintenance issues, but also helps to ensure cost effective vessel operation and fuel management.

Enginei’s warning ability has given startling, early results for two tugs in particular: The first showed up problems within minutes of installation on board a 1976-built vessel. The starboard engine was operating at full power with uneven and slightly elevated exhaust temperatures, whilst the port engine was operating at low-load despite both engines showing the same shaft speed on the bridge rpm gauges.

On closer inspection of the engine data via the enginei web portal, it could be seen that the port engine never achieved more than 40% load, even with the vessel free running and the starboard engine regularly exceeding 105% MCR for extended periods. The exhaust temperatures on two of the starboard engine’s cylinders were reaching dangerous levels, whilst another two of the cylinders appeared to be doing very little work at all.

Modifications to both engines’ control systems, fuel pumps and existing instrumentation rectified the problems, which had gone unrecognised for more than 20 years, while all the time causing engine failures, piston crown and valve erosion and damaging indicator clocks.

On another boat, a satellite link of the operations of a particular tug showed that having completed a job, a tugboat captain was heading back to base with the throttle wide open. It gave very little increase in speed but did show a huge increase in fuel consumption. Even on a short haul back to base the tug was consuming 38% more fuel with no operational benefit. Converted into hard cash this was roughly equivalent to £16,000 per year. Multiply that by a fleet and the numbers really start to add up.

In both cases the clients were able make adjustments to save energy, costs, and frustration.