Project Discovery

[goldfish65]

Can anyone tell me why Royal couldn't do a complete overhaul and refit of their older ships? Make them over into "Project Discovery" ships?

[twangster]

4 minutes ago, goldfish65 said:

Can anyone tell me why Royal couldn't do a complete overhaul and refit of their older ships? Make them over into "Project Discovery" ships?

 

Some things just can't be redesigned, the basic structure and bones of the ship.  That limits everything and would require a lot more engineering to do a meaningful rebuild.

 

Really hard to overhaul everything that makes a vessel fuel efficient.  Hull design for example. 

 

Even replacing the engines and propulsion units in a retrofit scenario costs significantly more than building a ship around new engines.  New ships are built from the engines up.  

 

If they did spend $900M to retrofit an old ship it would still be an old ship required to dry dock every two and half years which takes it out of service twice as often.  That's lost revenue.  It would always be an old ship that doesn't move through the water like a new ship engineered in current times.  Better to spend $1.1B and have new everything.  

 

I have a 20 year old car.  I could completely disassemble it and rebuild it using new electric motors, blind spot detector systems, airbag systems, anti lock braking computers and such but it would be double or more compared to what it costs to buy a new Tesla.  Why would I invest that kind of money to rebuild an old car?

[goldfish65]

3 hours ago, twangster said:

 

Some things just can't be redesigned, the basic structure and bones of the ship.  That limits everything and would require a lot more engineering to do a meaningful rebuild.

 

Really hard to overhaul everything that makes a vessel fuel efficient.  Hull design for example. 

 

Even replacing the engines and propulsion units in a retrofit scenario costs significantly more than building a ship around new engines.  New ships are built from the engines up.  

 

If they did spend $900M to retrofit an old ship it would still be an old ship required to dry dock every two and half years which takes it out of service twice as often.  That's lost revenue.  It would always be an old ship that doesn't move through the water like a new ship engineered in current times.  Better to spend $1.1B and have new everything.  

 

I have a 20 year old car.  I could completely disassemble it and rebuild it using new electric motors, blind spot detector systems, airbag systems, anti lock braking computers and such but it would be double or more compared to what it costs to buy a new Tesla.  Why would I invest that kind of money to rebuild an old car?

Thank you, that answers my question, I did not realize it would need so much and cost so much. 

[Lloyd555]

https://www.schiffe-und-kreuzfahrten.de/news/royal-caribbean-arbeitet-am-project-discovery-neue-auftraege-fuer-die-meyer-werft-aus-papenburg/290350/?fbclid=IwAR0_wvy46N9HRPB52mJFWAtfATTQsBZfXCyE445K5DBLeS1PP0Eb39s56eo

[Thoenix]

8 minutes ago, Lloyd555 said:

https://www.schiffe-und-kreuzfahrten.de/news/royal-caribbean-arbeitet-am-project-discovery-neue-auftraege-fuer-die-meyer-werft-aus-papenburg/290350/?fbclid=IwAR0_wvy46N9HRPB52mJFWAtfATTQsBZfXCyE445K5DBLeS1PP0Eb39s56eo

Am I reading correctly that there may be infrastructure being set aside at the shipyard for Project Discovery?  My German is rusty and google translate is iffy.

[Chiliburn]

8 minutes ago, Lloyd555 said:

https://www.schiffe-und-kreuzfahrten.de/news/royal-caribbean-arbeitet-am-project-discovery-neue-auftraege-fuer-die-meyer-werft-aus-papenburg/290350/?fbclid=IwAR0_wvy46N9HRPB52mJFWAtfATTQsBZfXCyE445K5DBLeS1PP0Eb39s56eo

What does it say Lloyd ?

[chengkp75]

Google translate seems to work fine here.  It just says that it is confirmed that "work" is being done on the new class.  This is planning, not any shipyard work.  It says the ships won't likely be built until the 2020's.

[chengkp75]

On 11/18/2023 at 10:24 AM, goldfish65 said:

Can anyone tell me why Royal couldn't do a complete overhaul and refit of their older ships? Make them over into "Project Discovery" ships?

As twangster says, overhauling an older ship just gets you a new looking old ship.  The reason that cruise lines get rid of ships over about 20 years old, is that the hull requires massive amounts of testing (ultrasonic thickness testing of steel plates and frames)(x-ray inspection of welds) that lead to required replacement of steel throughout the ship (hull plating, frames, tanks, piping).  So, the maintenance costs are higher for the older ship over the brand new ship.  Maintenance cost for a ship, versus the age of the ship is an exponential relationship.  It has been found that at the 15 year age, the cost of maintaining a ship starts to skyrocket, compared to just a couple of years before.

 

Another consideration is that the ship is built with enough crew cabins for the crew envisioned for how the ship is configured at new build.  If new venues, or attractions are added that require additional crew to man these venues and attractions, then they have to take crew away from existing duties.  This is why you don't see all the new "bells and whistles" retrofitted to older ships, there ain't enough crew to go around.

[chengkp75]

On 10/27/2023 at 6:41 PM, Shipof6Fools said:

Explora Journeys has two LNG vessels slated for construction in 2027 and 2028 that will be well under 100,000 GT.  The article states they will be slightly enlarged an extra 19 meters over their current ships. Explora 1 and 2 are a svelte 63900 GT at 813 feet long. So I think it is possible to use LNG and stay around Radiance class in size, although I personally think Discovery class will be larger than that.

Size has absolutely nothing to do with whether a ship can use LNG or not.  Many Norwegian ferries use LNG.  The deciding factor is ship's range, or how far it can go on the amount of fuel it can load, and the available infrastructure to refuel it in various ports.

[Oceansaway17]

38 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

As twangster says, overhauling an older ship just gets you a new looking old ship.  The reason that cruise lines get rid of ships over about 20 years old, is that the hull requires massive amounts of testing (ultrasonic thickness testing of steel plates and frames)(x-ray inspection of welds) that lead to required replacement of steel throughout the ship (hull plating, frames, tanks, piping).  So, the maintenance costs are higher for the older ship over the brand new ship.  Maintenance cost for a ship, versus the age of the ship is an exponential relationship.  It has been found that at the 15 year age, the cost of maintaining a ship starts to skyrocket, compared to just a couple of years before.

 

Another consideration is that the ship is built with enough crew cabins for the crew envisioned for how the ship is configured at new build.  If new venues, or attractions are added that require additional crew to man these venues and attractions, then they have to take crew away from existing duties.  This is why you don't see all the new "bells and whistles" retrofitted to older ships, there ain't enough crew to go around.

fascinating information thanks for sharing.

[Oceansaway17]

34 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Size has absolutely nothing to do with whether a ship can use LNG or not.  Many Norwegian ferries use LNG.  The deciding factor is ship's range, or how far it can go on the amount of fuel it can load, and the available infrastructure to refuel it in various ports.

I have heard that redoing the tanks on older ships is quite the feat and RCL has no interest in doing that much construction.   that's what one of the captain's told us.  only new ships get LNG.

[smokeybandit]

1 hour ago, Chiliburn said:

What does it say Lloyd ?

It says that an RC captain has Project Discovery in his RC bio. Then another 1000 words of conjecture and supposition.

[Chiliburn]

1 hour ago, smokeybandit said:

It says that an RC captain has Project Discovery in his RC bio. Then another 1000 words of conjecture and supposition.

It looks like a bit of plagiarism to me .

A fellow posted a photo on a couple other social media sites that are about Discovery.

The photo was of a summery of the staff captain on Quantum ,the ones you see out side the theatre on the video screens. It had one line that he worked on project discovery.

To me that’s the only place the author could have seen it . And it looks like he wrote a vague article with it.

[Chiliburn]

2 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Size has absolutely nothing to do with whether a ship can use LNG or not.  Many Norwegian ferries use LNG.  The deciding factor is ship's range, or how far it can go on the amount of fuel it can load, and the available infrastructure to refuel it in various ports.

There’s talk of making Synthetic Methanol in Australia with Solar Power.

Do you think the older ships could be converted to run on a Diesel/Ethanol mix ?

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Chiliburn

[chengkp75]

12 hours ago, Oceansaway17 said:

I have heard that redoing the tanks on older ships is quite the feat and RCL has no interest in doing that much construction.   that's what one of the captain's told us.  only new ships get LNG.

Retro-fitting a ship for LNG is nearly impossible, economically.  Conventional fuel tanks are just metal boxes with one or more sides being the hull.  LNG tanks have to be in certain locations, like not being on the sides of the ship, or on the bottom near the sides, where conventional fuel tanks are located.  Also, LNG tanks have to be cryogenic vessels (think of a vacuum coffee flask) that have a void tank around the LNG tank, and then there is the inerting equipment (places a non-explosive atmosphere above the LNG in the tank), the re-liquifaction equipment (takes the normal "boil-off" of LNG to methane and if not needed by the engines, cools it again to cryogenic liquid and pumps it back into the tanks.

[chengkp75]

10 hours ago, Chiliburn said:

There’s talk of making Synthetic Methanol in Australia with Solar Power.

Do you think the older ships could be converted to run on a Diesel/Ethanol mix ?

 

Since methanol is a liquid at ambient temperatures and pressures, the tankage problems of LNG are avoided.  But, since methanol is a "low flash point" (flash point is the temperature where the fuel gives off enough vapor to be able to be ignited by a spark source) fuel, it has some of the same safety and design considerations as LNG.  And, just like LNG, it will not ignite in a diesel (compression ignition) engine by itself, and needs a "cetane boost".  For LNG engines, this means the engine needs at least 5% diesel mixed with the LNG to get the fuel to ignite in the engine.  Not sure how much methanol would need, but likely similar.  Methanol also has a very low viscosity, and engine system designs use the viscosity of the fuel to lubricate the moving parts of the fuel system, so methanol's low viscosity leads to other problems/design needs.

 

While doable, it would still be costly to adapt older engines and engine rooms to meet the needs of a dual fuel methanol/diesel fuel, so it is not likely to happen.  You would be literally tearing the entire engine spaces of the ship apart to remove old systems and install new systems.

[Chiliburn]

8 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Since methanol is a liquid at ambient temperatures and pressures, the tankage problems of LNG are avoided.  But, since methanol is a "low flash point" (flash point is the temperature where the fuel gives off enough vapor to be able to be ignited by a spark source) fuel, it has some of the same safety and design considerations as LNG.  And, just like LNG, it will not ignite in a diesel (compression ignition) engine by itself, and needs a "cetane boost".  For LNG engines, this means the engine needs at least 5% diesel mixed with the LNG to get the fuel to ignite in the engine.  Not sure how much methanol would need, but likely similar.  Methanol also has a very low viscosity, and engine system designs use the viscosity of the fuel to lubricate the moving parts of the fuel system, so methanol's low viscosity leads to other problems/design needs.

 

While doable, it would still be costly to adapt older engines and engine rooms to meet the needs of a dual fuel methanol/diesel fuel, so it is not likely to happen.  You would be literally tearing the entire engine spaces of the ship apart to remove old systems and install new systems.

I know it wouldn’t be an easy thing to convert the engines but some of the marine engine makers like Wartsila  say they can. Ethanol is pretty bad on O rings and seals that aren’t compatible.

Royal Caribbean in Australia has said,until they can meet emissions they are down grading there services.The long distances here and big fuel burn make it unviable with increasing emission laws.

Apparently we will be making green fuels in Australia for the shipping industry soon ,

Which is promising.
 

https://sungasrenewables.com/sungas-renewables-selected-to-supply-green-methanol-for-new-hydrogen-and-e-methanol-facility-in-australia/

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, Chiliburn said:

I know it wouldn’t be an easy thing to convert the engines but some of the marine engine makers like Wartsila  say they can. Ethanol is pretty bad on O rings and seals that aren’t compatible.

Yeah, a diesel can run on flour dust, if adequately designed.  Yes, Wartsila and MAN have diesels that could be converted to methanol, as you say rubber goods are a particular problem, but we've learned to carry it in tankers with the proper materials.  The thing about methanol is that the fuel lines will need to be double walled (methanol fuel on the inside, an inert atmosphere between the pipes, to prevent personnel exposure to methanol.  And, even the return pipes (as all diesel systems provide more fuel to the engine than it needs, and returns the rest back to the tanks) will need to be double walled.  And, this is not just on the engine, but all the pipes throughout the engine room that carry fuel to/from the engines.

 

1 hour ago, Chiliburn said:

Royal Caribbean in Australia has said,until they can meet emissions they are down grading there services.The long distances here and big fuel burn make it unviable with increasing emission laws.

Not sure what is meant by this.  I looked at the Oz government AMSA website, and don't see that Oz has any more restrictions on emissions than elsewhere in the world (outside of the few ECA's around, and haven't heard about Oz implementing one).  The problem I see is the limited availability of ULSFO (ultra low sulfur fuel oil), which is required for all ships that don't have scrubbers everywhere in the world.  While many suppliers listed on the website provide ULSFO, most do it by road tanker, which is just not feasible for a cruise ship.  The only suppliers that I see that supply this by barge or pipeline are in Queensland (Brisbane area) and Victoria (Victoria area).  This means that fuel for ships would be limited to MGO (diesel), which is expensive to burn full time.

 

1 hour ago, Chiliburn said:

Apparently we will be making green fuels in Australia for the shipping industry soon ,

Which is promising.

But again, there is a need for infrastructure, where the green fuel supplier can either supply the fuel to the cruise ship dock via pipeline, or build bunker barges/tankers to bring it to the ships.

 

It all sounds promising, but it isn't easy, nor cheap, and lots of hurdles to jump over to get to the finish line.

[Oceansaway17]

10 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Retro-fitting a ship for LNG is nearly impossible, economically.  Conventional fuel tanks are just metal boxes with one or more sides being the hull.  LNG tanks have to be in certain locations, like not being on the sides of the ship, or on the bottom near the sides, where conventional fuel tanks are located.  Also, LNG tanks have to be cryogenic vessels (think of a vacuum coffee flask) that have a void tank around the LNG tank, and then there is the inerting equipment (places a non-explosive atmosphere above the LNG in the tank), the re-liquifaction equipment (takes the normal "boil-off" of LNG to methane and if not needed by the engines, cools it again to cryogenic liquid and pumps it back into the tanks.

Thanks for great reply

[Chiliburn]

3 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

Yeah, a diesel can run on flour dust, if adequately designed.  Yes, Wartsila and MAN have diesels that could be converted to methanol, as you say rubber goods are a particular problem, but we've learned to carry it in tankers with the proper materials.  The thing about methanol is that the fuel lines will need to be double walled (methanol fuel on the inside, an inert atmosphere between the pipes, to prevent personnel exposure to methanol.  And, even the return pipes (as all diesel systems provide more fuel to the engine than it needs, and returns the rest back to the tanks) will need to be double walled.  And, this is not just on the engine, but all the pipes throughout the engine room that carry fuel to/from the engines.

 

Not sure what is meant by this.  I looked at the Oz government AMSA website, and don't see that Oz has any more restrictions on emissions than elsewhere in the world (outside of the few ECA's around, and haven't heard about Oz implementing one).  The problem I see is the limited availability of ULSFO (ultra low sulfur fuel oil), which is required for all ships that don't have scrubbers everywhere in the world.  While many suppliers listed on the website provide ULSFO, most do it by road tanker, which is just not feasible for a cruise ship.  The only suppliers that I see that supply this by barge or pipeline are in Queensland (Brisbane area) and Victoria (Victoria area).  This means that fuel for ships would be limited to MGO (diesel), which is expensive to burn full time.

 

But again, there is a need for infrastructure, where the green fuel supplier can either supply the fuel to the cruise ship dock via pipeline, or build bunker barges/tankers to bring it to the ships.

 

It all sounds promising, but it isn't easy, nor cheap, and lots of hurdles to jump over to get to the finish line.

I found an interesting article .

 

Whats the nitrogen purge? Is that to flush the fuel lines out ?

 

https://www.sustainable-ships.org/stories/2023/methanol-marine-fuel

[chengkp75]

55 minutes ago, Chiliburn said:

I found an interesting article .

 

Whats the nitrogen purge? Is that to flush the fuel lines out ?

 

https://www.sustainable-ships.org/stories/2023/methanol-marine-fuel

Yes, the nitrogen purge is to purge all fuel from the pipes and engines, so that work can be done on the systems.  Something I saw there that I'd forgotten about, is that ships that use "low flashpoint fuel" as the primary fuel, need to have a redundant fuel system (diesel) that is totally separate from the LFL (low flashpoint liquid), and that is sufficient to see the ship return to port under its own power.  So, that is an additional cost as well as space required to store the "standby" fuel.

 

As I said, the fuel tanks will need to be "inerted", or have the atmosphere in the tank above the liquid have an oxygen content sufficiently low (less than 5%) to preclude combustion.  This is done either with nitrogen (requiring a nitrogen generator onboard), or "flue gas" from an inert gas generator, which is a system that burns diesel at a regulated low oxygen level, and then the high carbon dioxide/nitrogen flue gas is sent to the tanks.

[Jumping Cruiser]

Captain Rob on Wonder briefly spoke about Project Discovery at a recent Captains Corner. He said he doesn’t know much information other than they are planning to construct in the future. However, he did say that Royal are having a big senior leadership conference on Icon in January, which will last for 5 days, and would be expecting various announcements to come out of that event, one of which will likely be Discovery. 

[Jumping Cruiser]

Meyer Group recently unveiled some new ‘concept’ ship designs. One of them caught my attention in particular though, Avatar, a climate-neutral ship that they aim to build from 2030.

 

Is it just me, or does this kind of look like a smaller Icon Class? Could Discovery be constructed on this proposed platform?

 

I have linked the article below for anyone interested in reading. 

 

 

https://www.cruiseandferry.net/articles/meyer-group-presents-ship-concepts-at-seatrade-cruise-global

[Robo1098]

On 7/25/2023 at 3:05 AM, Nathan Graveson said:

RCCL have the perfect opportunity to use the Edge Class design from Celebrity as a basis for this new class. Firstly, the Parabolic Ultra-Bow is being used on both the Edge Class and the Icon Class, that is the bow of the future. Secondly, they have the opportunity to either use LNG or the new system for Celebrity Excel/Vertex which has the potential for 3 different fuel types. Thirdly, the use of Infinite balconies on the Edge Class is so perfect that it would almost be impossible for RCCL to not use them all over the ship. They will almost certainly redesign the ship to be more Royal in style but it could use the same dimensions as the larger Edge Class ships as it would keep the ship at around that 130,000 GT range. The development of the Discovery Class, is almost certainly underway, it has been for a long time already, I wouldn’t be surprised if we know more about this next year when RCCL put their order in with Meyer Werft for the construction of the first ship for either 2027/2028.

I could agree with most of those statements except the Infinite balconies being perfect. I think they are far from perfect and much prefer a true balcony that my wife or I can enjoy without shutting off the A/C to the rest of the cabin. 

[RobInMN]

At the Captain's Q&A on Radiance, I asked what the status of Project Discovery was. Captain Rumen said that Project Discovery is still in design phase, and looking like 2029/2030 (not sure if that's a build start or complete).