Energy and emission technology for improving vessel operations

IMO, EU and other political bodys have established regulations for emissions from ships and put forward targets for energy efficiency in international shipping industry. New emission controlled area are developing and will require accurate reporting and u nderstanding of the total energy use and the related emissions to air. Expected future fuel cost is uncertain and will require increased awareness from the ship owners to be able to run a sustainable business. Most ship owners are already in position to establish methods for improving energy consumption in their operations, but are facing problems regards to access of accurate methods and reliable tools and instrumentation. This is a general problem in the shipping industry and need further developmen t and verification of methods and instrumentation. The basic challenge is to explore new measuring methods for measuring of energy flow and emissions in a full scale instrumented operating vessel. This involves the basic understanding of influence and measurement accuracy in different sea states. Weather information is important to predict as its influence is critical for the design of the vessel with an optimum energy profile and critical for the best energy lifetime operation profile. Pre-defined en vironmental data like wave pattern recognation and its influence on the vessel in future time, need new measuring technologies and advanced statistical methods and data analysis. Most of the data given today is in a static behaviour and not with the dyna mic profile that exist in a vessel. The results from the project will be used to validate and verify existing models so these can be used in both in the design and the operational phase. The results will also be to develop standard methods and advanced instrumentation that can be used on-board as a tool for both controlling and predicting fuel consumtion and emissions in actual sea-states and trading routes.