Low-sulphur diesel fuel - will there be any difference?

[SRF]

And, BTW, Australia is one of the countries with a number of special requirements for nuclear powered ships into their waters.

[ccsclean21]

Put it this way, if you don't need smoke stacks and large fuel tanks then there is the extra space to drop a nuclear plant in and yes i have been on board both coal and nuclear powered and guess what, if you want to throw the internet at me then look out your own front door, you have a coal fired ship still operating on your great lakes in Michigan called the Badger, maybe you should go for a cruise on it. It was built in 1952 and still going strong and yes it is not Russian, see you can't blame Russia for everything . So who is smoking the coal dust now.

So far I have not got one decent ideas on how to get better fuels only criticisms.    

[ccsclean21]

So it seems you are not too happy with the nuclear idea then how about hydrogen which is clean and you can use seawater. If you are looking at the internet again make sure you research well before commenting.  Some ships are using gas turbines and a great idea but the moment there is a demand for a particular resource then the oil companies up the price and they did this when cars started using the LPG  and again that will run out too, then what.

 

 

[ccsclean21]

15 hours ago, SRF said:

And, BTW, Australia is one of the countries with a number of special requirements for nuclear powered ships into their waters.

Yeah we call it NIMBY Lol.  check internet for the acronym.  a good trivia question.

 

[Heidi13]

2 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

Put it this way, if you don't need smoke stacks and large fuel tanks then there is the extra space to drop a nuclear plant in and yes i have been on board both coal and nuclear powered and guess what, if you want to throw the internet at me then look out your own front door, you have a coal fired ship still operating on your great lakes in Michigan called the Badger, maybe you should go for a cruise on it. It was built in 1952 and still going strong and yes it is not Russian, see you can't blame Russia for everything . So who is smoking the coal dust now.

So far I have not got one decent ideas on how to get better fuels only criticisms.    

What weight will you use to replace the heavy fuel tanks, which are located low for stability reasons. Worked on many ships dating from the 1950's and not one of them burned coal. As the Chief mentioned coal was replaced for the greatest majority of commercial ships about 100 years ago.

 

However, we do have a number of restored floating museums that may still burn coal.

 

BTW - never heard the term smoke stack used on ships, we generally refer to them as funnels.

[ccsclean21]

As Chengkp75 Stated the coal burners went out in the 1920's but hey you lot built one in 1959 explain that and it's still operating carrying passengers and for stack or funnel look up Wikipedia.

Funnel is the smoke stack that smoke or steam come from, it depends which way you look at it, a bit like color or colour which one is right. Now instead of criticizing someone with an idea how about coming up with your own suggestions on a fuel of the future seeing how you seem to know something about ships and marine engines. 

Put it this way I would love to see ships run on cleaner, safer and cheaper fuel that would benefit all of us and not just the lines. To criticize someone who comes up with ideas does not get anyone anywhere. I read about people on this site complain about how the cruise lines are raising their costs because of rising fuel costs but no one comes up with ideas to help the lines reduce costs.

How many of you have ever wrote a letter or sent an email to the cruise lines stating how you enjoyed the cruise, but I do know the lines get a lot of complaints and criticism, how about instead of criticizing the ships you went on ( unless it was so bad in every way that there is no hope of saving) instead give polite suggestions on how they can improve not tear them apart. 

I love cruising and I don't want to see them fade away because of rising costs to the point that they become non profitable.

[chengkp75]

7 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

Put it this way, if you don't need smoke stacks and large fuel tanks then there is the extra space to drop a nuclear plant in and yes i have been on board both coal and nuclear powered and guess what, if you want to throw the internet at me then look out your own front door, you have a coal fired ship still operating on your great lakes in Michigan called the Badger, maybe you should go for a cruise on it. It was built in 1952 and still going strong and yes it is not Russian, see you can't blame Russia for everything . So who is smoking the coal dust now.

So far I have not got one decent ideas on how to get better fuels only criticisms.    

I "blamed" the Russians for developing nuclear powered ships, due to their known laxity of regulations both with nuclear facilities and merchant shipping.  I asked for examples of planned nuclear powered ships, which you claimed there are, but you went the other way, deflecting the argument.

 

Yes, the Badger is still burning coal, and there were until a few years ago, coal carrying bulkers that burned coal, the Energy Enterprise and Energy Independence, which were built in the 70's and 80's.  Both of these ships had advanced combustion control systems that produced a much cleaner burn than the old coal burners.  The Badger has been updated over the years to produce more efficient burning as well, including just 3-4 years ago, a complete overhaul of the combustion controls.

 

After 44 years in the maritime industry, I have my own ideas about the future of fuels, but this is about your suggestion for nuclear power.

[chengkp75]

7 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

So it seems you are not too happy with the nuclear idea then how about hydrogen which is clean and you can use seawater. If you are looking at the internet again make sure you research well before commenting.  Some ships are using gas turbines and a great idea but the moment there is a demand for a particular resource then the oil companies up the price and they did this when cars started using the LPG  and again that will run out too, then what.

 

 

Hydrogen would be a great idea, if they can get the technology to work.  Fuel cells could also be possible, but again, the technology is years or decades away.  I've done my research over 40+ years, I don't need to be an internet troll to find the answers.

 

You do know that a "gas turbine" does not necessarily burn natural gas?  Marine gas turbines burn plain old "Marine Gas Oil" the maritime term for diesel fuel.

 

 

[chengkp75]

4 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

As Chengkp75 Stated the coal burners went out in the 1920's but hey you lot built one in 1959 explain that and it's still operating carrying passengers and for stack or funnel look up Wikipedia.

Funnel is the smoke stack that smoke or steam come from, it depends which way you look at it, a bit like color or colour which one is right. Now instead of criticizing someone with an idea how about coming up with your own suggestions on a fuel of the future seeing how you seem to know something about ships and marine engines. 

Put it this way I would love to see ships run on cleaner, safer and cheaper fuel that would benefit all of us and not just the lines. To criticize someone who comes up with ideas does not get anyone anywhere. I read about people on this site complain about how the cruise lines are raising their costs because of rising fuel costs but no one comes up with ideas to help the lines reduce costs.

How many of you have ever wrote a letter or sent an email to the cruise lines stating how you enjoyed the cruise, but I do know the lines get a lot of complaints and criticism, how about instead of criticizing the ships you went on ( unless it was so bad in every way that there is no hope of saving) instead give polite suggestions on how they can improve not tear them apart. 

I love cruising and I don't want to see them fade away because of rising costs to the point that they become non profitable.

If this is such a concern for you, why don't you start where you need to start, at the regulatory and statutory level, and lobby your government to make all ships burn cleaner fuels?  Why should the cruise line, and only cruise lines, expend more money to develop the technologies and build infrastructure when what they are currently burning is legal in every country in the world?  Get your government to have its delegates to the IMO advocate for even cleaner fuels than the IMO has already voluntarily done, requiring worldwide fuel sulfur limits to be dropped 86%, despite fears of many experts in the maritime, oil industry, and financial worlds of the impact this will have on the global economy.  The industry has been pro-active, but if you want them to be more so, great, put the pressure on the industry, all of the industry, not just the 5% of world shipping that cruises represent, via regulations.

 

As for CC posters who "claim" that cruise lines are raising prices due to rising fuel costs, I would say that most of these folks have no inside information, and are basically speaking out of their hat.  You only need to do a comparison with cruise prices from a couple of decades ago, adjusting for inflation, to see that cruise prices have been essentially stable over this time frame.  I just looked at a historical crude oil price chart (though there is no direct link between crude price and bunker fuel price), and crude oil was $16.40 in 1946, which in today's dollars is $215.78.  Is crude at this price today?  Nope, around $65, or 30% of the price it was over 70 years ago.  How does that explain "rising fuel costs"?

 

And, as for the residual fuel being a "benefit" to the cruise line only, study what residual fuel really is, not just the Wikipedia page (if there is one).  80% of the world's refineries can only extract 70-80% of each barrel of crude oil as refined products (jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel, gasoline, lubricating oils), and the remainder is "residual marine fuel".  Now, if the ships don't burn this, what happens to it?  Do you pay to transport it to the small number of refineries that can extract further refined product from this (adding to the cost of the refined product produced at the original refinery to get rid of the "waste")?  Do you spend hundreds of millions to upgrade the refinery (adding to the cost of the refined product)?  Or do you dispose of it in some environmentally safe way, so that again the cost to produce that 80% refined product goes up because the refinery is "wasting" the other 20%?  How does this affect the world economy?  Ships burn residual fuel because the product is there, and they are capable of burning it, with benefits to the maritime industry, the oil industry, and the general global economy, since 80% of the world's economy travels by sea.

[chengkp75]

6 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

Yeah we call it NIMBY Lol.  check internet for the acronym.  a good trivia question.

 

Lots of folks here are smarter than you give them credit for, and don't need to check the internet for everything, including an acronym that has been around for decades.

[ccsclean21]

sure these old sayings have been around a long time but some younger generation possibly has never heard of it and that does not imply they are not bright, there are a lot of old sayings that the younger generation have never heard of as they don't get mentioned much these days.

If you have all that valuable knowledge on fuels, marine engines etc why don't you put it to good use instead of attacking me because I had an opinion.   

[chengkp75]

12 minutes ago, ccsclean21 said:

sure these old sayings have been around a long time but some younger generation possibly has never heard of it and that does not imply they are not bright, there are a lot of old sayings that the younger generation have never heard of as they don't get mentioned much these days.

If you have all that valuable knowledge on fuels, marine engines etc why don't you put it to good use instead of attacking me because I had an opinion.   

No "attack" on you, just giving reasons why your opinion is not feasible.  I do put my knowledge to good use, in the maritime industry, through avenues that may produce results, not on a cruise forum.

[ccsclean21]

Another thing, if there is more engines using diesel then the oil companies increase the price like they did with LPG as LPG used to be dirt cheap but now cars are using it oil companies up the price, as for cargo and cruise lines maybe they should invest and pull together to research better fuel and cheaper plus cleaner as they are the ones who will find it hard to make a profit when the time comes and fossil fuel is restricted and expensive. you don't need much for fossil fuel to increase in price just look what happened when the conflict in Iraq started and petrol prices sky rocketed over night and it can happen again and shipping lines and airlines are the most vulnerable.

[ccsclean21]

People like you have valuable knowledge that should be passed down to the younger generation. Every day I hear how young students are aiming their careers in computers, even the trades are not sort after much anymore. I don't know anyone who is looking at a career in marine engineering unlike when i went to school I new a couple friends wanting careers in marine mechanics and aircraft fitters.  It seems the young ones want to do computer science these days.

The reason I put that nuclear idea out there was to try and get people to see how important it is that we find better alternatives, get the juices flowing so to speak,  it was not meant to insult anyone.  Sure nuclear has big big issues and until we can control the radiation after a disaster then it can never be used safely and I do know a lot of ports won't allow those ships to berth ever.  as for hydrogen it also has it's own issues.  

[SRF]

On 9/1/2019 at 10:14 PM, ccsclean21 said:

So it seems you are not too happy with the nuclear idea then how about hydrogen which is clean and you can use seawater. If you are looking at the internet again make sure you research well before commenting.  

 

Hydrogen is not an energy SOURCE.  You have to make it, so it an energy transport medium.

 

But notice after all the hype, how many hydrogen cars there are????

 

 

[ccsclean21]

People are scared of anything that is new especially if it can go boom while driving, anyway you wouldn't want people to have hydrogen cars as some people tend to not look after their cars and if a leak occurred due to lack of maintenance and as for ships they are well maintained by highly qualified engineers who treat their power plants with the utmost care so a leak would be very rear as they would be right onto it.  If Hydrogen comes into contact with oxygen then some nasty things happen. It took awhile for people to take to LPG in their cars as they were skeptic and didn't quite trust the stuff, fine for BBQ's  and I think the only reason some bit the bullet and got their cars installed was fuel prices were sky rocketing but the cost to install them was expensive and you had to cover a lot of miles to recoup the cost back, now a lot of hire cars and taxi's have them as they do the miles.  A lot of people were thinking about putting them in especially when there was a government rebate but now that's gone and LPG is not so cheap because fuel companies found they can make a fortune because there is now a demand. The government trial natural gas and LPG and a couple of them went up.

the moment some genius comes up with something that works and is truly cheap to buy and run be assured the tax's that will be put on it will make it like all the other fuels expensive. 

There is not much alternatives to fossil fuel as it is either unstable and dangerous or you have to be plugged in to a power point every couple of hours, no good to ships Lol.

And a big thank you to those engineers for keeping the ships running especially the cruise ships we travel on.  

[DirtyDawg]

6 hours ago, SRF said:

 

Hydrogen is not an energy SOURCE.  You have to make it, so it an energy transport medium.

 

But notice after all the hype, how many hydrogen cars there are????

 

 

 

I started to hear about hydrogen fuel cells for cars in the early 90's. The hype was we'd have the cells in cars by the mid 90's. My kids have been born, grown up, and exited the house and still no hydrogen fuel cell cars. 

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars were a worthy dream, like my dream to date a super model, but reality sometimes intervenes and we don't get to fulfill the dream. 😭

 

 

Edited September 4, 2019 by DirtyDawg

[Heidi13]

1 hour ago, ccsclean21 said:

as for ships they are well maintained by highly qualified engineers who treat their power plants with the utmost care so a leak would be very rear as they would be right onto it. 

Some ships are well maintained, but sadly not the majority and it generally isn't the fault of the officers & crew. My first ship had twin opposed Doxfords and between UK & NZ we probably sailed on 1 engine for at least part of 15-20% of the days. A few times we had no engines.

 

Have also seen sister ships where one ship was pristine - you could eat off the E/R plates, decks were spotless & running gear well maintained, but on a sister ship the E/R could be greasy & in dis-repair, decks/hull could be corroded & running gear badly worn.

 

Chatting to surveyor & pilot friends, the condition of the average ship deep sea, especially FoC ships, would not meet the definition of being well maintained. 

[Underwatr]

5 hours ago, DirtyDawg said:

 

I started to hear about hydrogen fuel cells for cars in the early 90's. The hype was we'd have the cells in cars by the mid 90's. My kids have been born, grown up, and exited the house and still no hydrogen fuel cell cars. 

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars were a worthy dream, like my dream to date a super model, but reality sometimes intervenes and we don't get to fulfill the dream. 😭

 

 

I should know better than to wander into this thread, but are you aware of the Toyota Mirai?

 

Currently available in California & Hawaii.

 

 

[ccsclean21]

Just saw that Toyota Mirai  looks good now where do you get the fuel. So now we have a choice electric and hydrogen electric.  Least Toyota is doing research into new fuel sources and even Hyundai and Hyundai make ships so who knows.  

[ccsclean21]

Who knows you might get your dream super model.  😁Lol

[DirtyDawg]

3 hours ago, Underwatr said:

I should know better than to wander into this thread, but are you aware of the Toyota Mirai?

 

Currently available in California & Hawaii.

 

 

 

56 minutes ago, ccsclean21 said:

Who knows you might get your dream super model.  😁Lol

 

WOW, they finally got  them into a production car. I'll have to move to California for fuel efficiency and a super model. I Win!!! 😃

[ccsclean21]

good luck trying to refuel it

[Underwatr]

2 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

good luck trying to refuel it

https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/stations.html

 

Not bad in LA or the Bay Area (note that they're only offered in CA and HI). Elsewhere in CA you need to plan ahead. Not too long ago electric cars had the same issue (unless you were very patient with a 110 outlet).

[SRF]

6 hours ago, ccsclean21 said:

Just saw that Toyota Mirai  looks good now where do you get the fuel. So now we have a choice electric and hydrogen electric.  Least Toyota is doing research into new fuel sources and even Hyundai and Hyundai make ships so who knows.  

Electric and hydrogen are NOT fuel SOURCES.

 

They are energy transfer/transport mediums.

 

You cannot mine or pump electricity or hydrogen out of the ground.  You have to MAKE it, using another form of energy.  Which takes energy.  And in every process, it costs energy to transform from one form of energy to another.