Senichi Sasaki *
1. INTRODUCTION also for BOG treatment systems as well. When BOG treatment
Infiltration of heat from external air sources and ship motions systems break down. BOG will be inevitably emitted to the
causes a portion of the cargo carried by low-temperature atmosphere. In order to deal with such situations, IGC Code
liquefied gas carriers (LNG carriers) to be converted into boil requires that a duplicate BOG system be maintained. For steam
off gas (BOG). As this gas can be used to power their boilers, turbine driven ships, the main boiler can also perform BOG
steam turbines have thus become the most common propulsion treatment. The surplus steam generated by combustion in the
system used on LNG carriers. In recent years, however, studies main boiler is treated by the dump condenser, and the surplus
have been carried out on a variety of other propulsion systems, heat quantity is released into sea water. Dual fuel diesel engines,
including oi!-flred diesel main engines with reliquefaction units, reliquefaction units, and gas combustion units may be used as
electric propulsion systems with dual fuel diesel generators, BOG treatment systems in place of the boiler. Of these,
and dual fuel diesel main engines. Some of these propulsion however. IGC code only requires redundancy for reliquefaction
systems are already being used on actual ships. units, and there are no requirements for the other systems.
As with general merchant ships. classification society rules do This report compiles the results from an investigation of the
not include special redundancy requirements for the main redundancy requirements for propulsion and BOG treatment
engine and propeller shafting systems of LNG carriers. If the system using risk assessment as ajudgnient tool.
components are determined to be reliable, then a single main
engine is adequate. As a general requirement, a ship is only 2. Systems to be assessed for risk
expected to be able to maintain a navigable speed (7 knots or The basic configurations of the four kinds of propulsion
half the speed required by the rules for fully-loaded condition) system (including BOG treatment system) to be assessed for
in the event of a single-point failure. risk are shown in Fig. I.
However, despite the lack of special rule requirements, due to Conventional steam turbine propulsion system:
the special characteristics of LNG carriers, including: This system consists of one low pressure turbine, one
Regular sailings demanded as part of the LNG supply high pressure turbine, and two main boilers. With regard
chain to generators, two generators driven by steam turbine and
Requirements for main engine standby at terminals, one generator driven by diesel engine were considered.
main engine redundancy is considered to be a general Oil-fired diesel engine propulsion system:
requirement for LNG projects. Due to this, redundancy is This is a system that consists usually of two oil-fired
generally required for LNG carrier propulsion systems, diesel main engines. With regard to generators, a system
excluding that equipment which is considered to be highly with three generators driven by diesel engine was
reliable. (shaft, reduction gear, etc.) examined. Reliquefaction unit are generally used as the
Redundancy has always been established empirically. For BOG treatment system tr this propulsion type.
example, the high and low pressure turbines on steam turbine (e) Electric propulsion system using DFD generator
driven ships can be operated independently of each other. engine:
Further, installing two diesel main engines and two propulsion This is an example of a typical system using DFD engine.
motors for electric propulsion systems has become common Four generators driven by DFD engine and two motors
practice. In this way, equipment and machinery redundancy for propulsion are provided. Although this may use either
was ensured merely by installing two of each piece of a reliquefaction unit, a gas combustion unit (GCU), or an
machinery. Until now, there have been no real cases where the auxiliary boiler as its BOG treatment system, use of a
level of redundancy was analyzed theoretically. single gas combustion unit was examined in this case.
Redundancy is required not only for propulsion systems, but (d) DFD propulsion engine system:
* Research Institute, Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (ClassNK)
Main boue
I
Dump Condenser
=
Reduction Gear
T
e-jf
H. P. Turbine
L. P. Tu bine
D/ E Cargo Tank
DE
GCU I'll'
Reti luction Gear
D/ E
Propulsion
O/E BOG Compressor
Motor
. D/E
Cargo Tank
DJE
GCU
H. P. BOG Compressor
O/E
2-stroke
Main Engine
DE
2-stroke
Main Engine Cargo Tank
Fault Tree
Loss of self-propelling
ability
Propeller failure
.....J Propeller shaft (OR
j
system failure Shaft failure
Red. Gear failure
HP turbine failure
Turbine failure AND
H LP turbine failure
S/Ti failure
DIE failure
65
ClassNK TECHNICAL BULLETIN 2009
3.3 Estimation of failure rate and consist of the BOG treatment system and the power supply
Data such as failure rate assigned to basic events has been units required for powering these systems.
obtained from the Ship Reliability Investigation Committee
database (SRIC database) of the National Maritime Research Table 3 BOG treatment system to be assessed
System to be assessed Generator
institute. However, reliability data does not exist for equipment
(a) Main boilers x 2 (conventional ST s 2. DE s I
with few failures or equipment with practically no operating system)
records. Data for equipment with few failures was estimated by (b) Re-liquefaction unit DE x 3
(e) Gas combustion unit (gas burner x 2) DFD x 4
the classifying frequency of failures. Further, practically no
(c) Gas combustion unit (gas burner x 1) DFD x 4
operating records exist for machinery like DFD engines. For (d) Gas combustion im it (gas burner s 2) DE x 3
such machinery, the failure rate distribution of oil-fired diesel Note: DE: Oil-fired diesel engine: DFD: Dual fuel diesel engine: ST:
engines was determined, and the mean value of parts with high Steam turbine
failure rates was found. That is, the DFD engine was treated as The system in (e)' of Table 3 is the case of the system of (e)
an engine with comparatively high failure rate and the failure having one gas burner, and is installed to study the redundancy
rate was estimated. of gas burner.
oil-fired diesel main engine, propulsion motor and DFD main Even in case of(c)' having one propulsion motor in the
engine respectively. By performing risk assessments of such system in (e), the difference in failure rate and
availability in the two systems was not large; this leads to
systems, the redundancy of engines and propulsion motors can
the judgment that one propulsion motor may be used.
be studied.
In the systems (b)' and (d)' having one oil-fired diesel
3.5 BOG treatment system to be assessed propulsion engine and one DFD propulsion engine, the
To study the redundancy of the equipment constituting the failure rate was clearly higher and the availability lower
than the system in (a). From this, it can be concluded that
reliquefaction unit and gas combustion unit, risk assessment
multiple engines are necessary to obtain a system with
was carried out taking the top event of FTA as "BOG emission
reliability equivalent to or greater than then system in (a'i.
to atmosphere. Table 3 shows the systems to be assessed. The
systems to be assessed are part of the basic system of Fig. 1,
[1/h r] NO
DFD main engine < 1
102
Oil-fired diesel main engine x i
io
io Steam turbine Recommended
a)
(t
t) 1
Oil-fired diesel main engine x 2