The refittable ship by Julia Benedictus
At our company we always host one or more interns, with a mutual goal: they can learn from us and we from them. We aim for a diverse group, different backgrounds in study and nationality. In 2020 Julia Benedictus, student of TU Delft, joined us for her graduation project. With her research on refittable ship propulsion she is nominated for the Maritime Designer Award 2021. The Award is presented at the Maritime Awards Gala on November 1st.
“Currently, many technologically interesting questions arise from the energy transition, including what to do with ships that are taken into operation soon, using diesel: prepare them for a refit, or prepare them for early scrapping? Conoship International takes an active role in the energy transition by designing all sorts of innovative solutions for ships with modern propulsion, including alternative fuels and refittable ships. As they are eager to take on interns, and I was eager to dive into refittable ships, or, more specifically, refittable ship propulsion, a research goal was soon set: to develop a method for modular design of the power supply system of a short-sea dry cargo ship, that allows a low-impact refit, to reduce the ship’s GHG emissions when the alternative power supply technology is ready.” says Julia.
How can you make a ship refittable?
In the research, a method for modular design to enable a low-impact refit of power supply system of a short-sea dry cargo ship was developed, and the developed method resulted in the design of two different refittable ships. The method gave satisfactory results and showed that little design effort could make a future refit much easier, even when alternatives are not fully known at the time of the design. Diesel electric as starting point made it very easy to implement the refittability. However, adapting an existing design for a diesel-geared ship into a refittable diesel-geared variant showed to be highly attainable as well, by choosing the modules carefully.
You can read the entire article here:
All images courtesy of Julia Benedictus
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