Fuel is one of the most expensive assets on a vessel, and one of the most essential. Its usage must be efficient, with allocation regularly accounted for and reported back to the head office, and the fuel switching process must adhere to ECA zone compliance.
Typically, the chief engineer of a ship is in charge of this fuel inventory management. But the breadth and width of this job is extensive for one person, particularly without supporting tools and technology that can help streamline the process. Because without insight into how fuel is being used, you could be burning up unnecessary fuel, which drives up costs, and could even leave you facing a fine for inaccurate reporting.
The Current Insufficiency
Current methods for managing inventory are very labor intensive, complex, and involve a lot of variables. First, you must manually calculate corrections for continuously changing temperature and density, a tedious process that often includes significant errors. Then it is necessary to convert the original numbers from volume to mass. These high maintenance methods take time, leaving the results outdated before you even discover them.
This leaves you with insufficient resources to manually control usage of the vessel full of fuel. Even volumetric flow meters cannot solve the problem of traceability, and without an accurate baseline measurement, it becomes difficult to truly determine if any operational changes that are made actually do have a positive, negative, or any effect at all on consumption.
You can’t formulate a plan without ascertaining the current status. You need to know where you are at before deciding where you need to get to.
The Emerson Micro Motion Measurement Solution
Introducing Emerson’s Micro Motion measurement solution, a technology service that gives you the resources needed to report usage accurately and to ensure that your practices follow ECA zone requirements reliably.
Micro Motion mass flow meters are 5-15 times more accurate than other measurement technologies, also delivering direct mass, density, and temperature corrected volume and consumption. This provides an accurate baseline measurement from which to track progress and improvement, which in turn allows you to establish baseline fuel consumption measurement for any type of fuel used, even liquid natural gas.
This support service is a comprehensive package that comes with:
- installation recommendations
- meter commissioning
- post-installation support
The Micro Motion flow meter technology has no moving parts, is low maintenance, and delivers reliable and transparent measurement. With the information gained from these flow meters, you can focus on primary tasks without extensive troubleshooting or concern over limited knowledge. Provide complete clarity to fuel allocation and easily prove compliance this measurement solution.
Get more information on Emerson Micro Motion’s marine specific fuel measurement solutions by visiting our site or watching the complete video.
