Ship emissions assessment in short sea shipping: application on weather ship routing, slow steaming and maritime education and training

(English) A significant proportion of global carbon dioxide emissions are attributed to ocean-sailing ships. These shipping emissions are predicted to double in less than 30 years. In this sense, it is mandatory to develop tools and methods for a proper assessment of the air contaminants emitted by...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Borén Altés, Clara
Tipo de recurso: tesis doctoral
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:CBUC, CESCA
Repositorio:TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red
OAI Identifier:oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/691766
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10803/691766
https://dx.doi.org/10.5821/dissertation-2117-412171
Access Level:acceso embargado
Palabra clave:Weather ship routing
Fuel consumption
Shipping emissions
Climate change
Short Sea Shipping
Slow steaming
Speed‒power relation
Distance education
Maritime education and training
Competence-based training
Optimización de rutas
Consumo de combustible
Emisiones
Cambio climático
Transporte marítimo de corta distancia
Navegación lenta
Relación velocidad-potencia
Educación a distancia
Educación y formación marítimas
Formación basada en competencias
Optimització de rutes
Consum de combustible
Emissions del transport marítim
Canvi climàtic
Transport marítim de curta distància
Navegació lenta
Relació velocitat-potència
Educació a distància
Educació i formació marítimes
Formació basada en competències
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Nàutica
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Descripción
Sumario:(English) A significant proportion of global carbon dioxide emissions are attributed to ocean-sailing ships. These shipping emissions are predicted to double in less than 30 years. In this sense, it is mandatory to develop tools and methods for a proper assessment of the air contaminants emitted by vessels as the basis for developing efficient policies also enhancing best practices on board. From an academic point of view, the training of seafarers is the backbone of success in emissions abatement as their actions and knowledge have a direct impact on ships operation. From a theoretical point of view, the objective of this thesis is to analyse the effects on emissions abatement of the two operational techniques, i. e. weather ship routing and slow steaming, used in the shipping industry to reduce fuel consumption taking also into consideration future seafarers’ education on the mentioned techniques. Firstly, this thesis merges the estimation of shipping pollutants and their mitigation through weather routing optimisation; two lines of research widely analysed separately but seldom discussed together. An open software of weather ship routing is used to obtain the minimum cost (i.e. optimised route) in terms of sailing time, using high-resolution wave forecasting analysing several scenarios for a Ro-Pax vessel sailing in the Mediterranean Sea. The assessment of fuel consumption and ship emissions calculations have been inspired by a bottom-up methodology, in conjunction with the estimation of the power increase needed to overcome speed decrement due to waves. The ship routing optimisation reveals a reduction up to 30% of ship emissions during severe storms on longer routes. Nevertheless, all the cases studied show emissions mitigation when ship routing optimisation is used. The expected increase of extreme weather events, in terms of frequency, intensity and duration due to climate change, suggests a gradual gain of implementing weather ship routing optimisation in all types of routes, regardless of the distance. Secondly, this contribution also investigates the effect on fuel consumption and emissions when vessels are sailing below the design speed (i.e. slow steaming), as a strategy to minimize fuel consumption. The estimation of fuel consumption is commonly based on the cubic speed- power relation as a bottom-up approach. Nevertheless, the cubic relation could overestimate the impact of slow steaming on fuel consumption reduction and the emissions assessment. Container ships real fuel consumption data is compared with the results of assessing these parameters from a bottom-up approach. The exponential values obtained for the speed- power relation show an overrating over 20%. Moreover, this section shows the results of the additional emissions savings in the framework of ship-specific measures when weather ship routing and slow steaming are applied simultaneously. Based on the results obtained, the present thesis proposes a weather ship routing software developed at the Barcelona School of Nautical Studies (UPC-Tech) as a new teaching tool for distance and face-to-face education, which has the aim to assess some knowledge of several competences of the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) code on weather routing and emissions abatement. The results of a teaching trial carried out alternatively at sea (distance education) and onshore (face-to-face education) are compared in terms of competences acquisition in the Maritime Education and Training framework. Results indicate that, in the context of maritime training, there are no significant differences between students enrolled in a face-to-face or in a distance environment and results also demonstrate that the proposed software represents an innovative teaching tool that can be used by all Maritime Education and Traning Institutions.