Ship of the year - headache of the year

[The Dieselduck]

The new 360 foot "tug" Aiviq has lost power in the north pacific, and its tow line to the arctic drilling platform, Kulluk, has parted. Shell's venture into arctic waters has been fraught with close calls, we will have to see what turns out of this. Sounds like bad fuel is the cause.

More on the story...

http://www.uscgnews.com/go/doc/4007/166 ... iak-Alaska
http://www.adn.com/2012/12/28/2736856/s ... rylink=cpy
http://gcaptain.com/shells-aiviq-breaks ... lling-rig/
http://arcticready.com/classic-kulluk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiviq

[offshoresnipe]

Might be the ship of the year but the E/R crew sure isn't.
We will never know the truth behind it all, as Shell and Chouest will cover this up as fast as they can. I bet Shell is looking at getting more vessels like the Tor Viking II up there next year.
I sailed in these waters 12 years ago and what I find hard to understand is bad fuel, the fuel was always very good, and to be on a vessel as this and not have any warning signs. I could understand if the fuel was from say Haiti.
In the winter I always made sure the filters are good, fuel is being cleaned, day tanks drained, etc., I knew in 20 foot seas it was all getting mixed togeather. The fuel tanks can't be that dirty yet.
What a embarassment to US licensed engineers.

[Big Pete]

Reading the links, it sounds as if she has major problems, one says the Coastguard airlifted 2,000 lbs of spare parts to her!! That is a lot of spares if it is accurate, much more than a few filters and fuel pumps.
Nobody has commented on those Cat engines yet....
I see she appears to have a mechanical drive, 2 Cats geared onto each Schottel prop unit and has shaft alternators on that system as well as seperate diesel Generators, no mention of problems with the generator sets. It might have been worth having a "get you home system" where the Diesel Alternators could have fed power into the shaft Alternators, using them as Motors to drive the props. Ships have been built with this ability for years.
Alternatively, a full Diesel Electric system would have given more flexibility and resilience.
BP

[Wyatt]

I'll bet it was low sulphur fuel. Happened to us and the injector pumps began to give out. Doesn't take many pumps to shut down a Cat. Ended up pouring lub oil into the fuel tanks to assist with lubrication until this extremly dry fuel was used up.

[jimmys]

I worked on the Cat 3612 the old numbering and they run on MDO. I cant be sure they are the same as these engines, but very similar. You have got to watch up there you get the proper grade of winter diesel. Its specially blended.
They dont like sodium either ie salt water in the bunkers, the dissolved salt mixes into the bunkers and is difficult to remove. Its got to be bad the V12 has 12 separate fuel pumps one for each cylinder.
Usually plenty clean gas oil aboard these ships you can change on to.

regards

[jimmys]

We are now seeing the Kulluk has finally run aground, I wonder how they are going to get the blame for that on to BP. Oh, I am so sorry it maybe Shell. Of course nothing to do with the GovUSA.
The US Coastgaurd could not pull their way out of a papar bag.

regards

[JollyJack]

If he had regular MDO or MGO, it would cloud up pretty quickly when the temperature dropped below 0 C. Lost count of the number of tankers and bulkers I've detained on PSC inspections in winter because the lifeboat engine didn't start. I had to explain that the cloud point of MDO is generally above 0C, so send the agent to the local gas station and get a 40 gallon drum of diesel!

Like most fuels, diesel is a mix of hydrocarbons, and the components have different freezing points. For Number 2 diesel, as the ambient temperatures drop toward 0°C, it begins to cloud, due to the paraffin in the fuel solidifying. As the temperatures drop below 0°C, the molecules combine into solids, large enough to be stopped by the filter. This is known as the gel point, and generally occurs about -9.5 degrees C below the cloud point. Once it gets to -5C or so, the engine ain't gunna start.

This wax forms a coating on the filter which results in a loss of engine power. The same thing happens on starting an engine when the temperature is below freezing. The filter becomes almost instantly coated with wax - usually, enough fuel gets through to allow the engine to idle, but not attain operating RPM. There are two common ways to overcome this: one is a diesel additive, the other is a fuel heater.

Commercial diesel, sold at your corner gas station, has the additive necessary to lower the cloud point waayyyyy below 0C (Usually methyl hydrate) The usual practise aboard ships is to use MDO as lifeboat fuel. Choest is based in Louisiana, don't see many 0 C days there, so it wouldn't enter a coon-ass head that diesel fuel gels.

As for sulphur, you can't buy diesel fuel of any kind on the eastern seaboard with a sulphur content higher than 0.05%. North American ECA limit is 1% sulphur, so the diesel is well within that. By 2020, the maximum allowable sulphur content of any fuel will be 0.1% and yes, that includes heavy fuel.

[JK]

Biodiesel is another issue. If they got a shot of that somewhere, such as what is going on in BC, there could be an issue. No one really seems to know what will happen to it in DB tanks in the Arctic.
I saw the Kulluk 20 years ago, laid up in Summer Harbour and never thought it would work again, now I wonder if it will survive the grounding.

[JollyJack]

Check cloud point and gel point of the biodiesel

[jimmys]

I dont know what is going on in BC but if you blend No1 and No2 diesel the additives used in the normal blend are not suitable for biodiesel. In blended diesel with biodiesel you need different additives. My Shogun runs on blended diesel with biodiesel, no problems.
What worries me is the hull of the rig. Three inches thick, its bad enough welding one inch thick steel for low temperatures never mind three inches.With low air and sea temperatures along with cyclic stresses we can look to our fracture mechanics for a result and I can say it will not be a good result.

regards

[JK]

Some pictures and schematics of the Kulluk.

http://www.mxak.org/community/kulluk/kullukmore.html

[The Dieselduck]

Obviously something failed in operations, procedures or building of the vessel.

After seeing a video of the Aiviq towing in heavy seas, I am incline to think the tank venting may have been overwhelmed, allowing water into the fuel tanks. The video on youtube, which has been removed now, showed the aft deck awash during towing. Not a couple of inches either, but several feet of green water on deck, and sloshing around pretty violently. I think it may be premature to blame the crew, however, it is always basic, if not, paramount to monitor your fuel tanks for water.

I was very surprised to see this story in the first place. Like Offshore Snipe mentioned, you could expect bad fuel from Haiti; but from BC, Alaska, not typically a problem. But everything is different in the Gulf of Alaska. Never been myself, but heard many times that the Gulf makes the Winter North Atlantic look like a pond.

Additionally, just an observation, but Kulluks is no stranger to the arctic, with Beaudrill operating it in the eighties. Mind you they had plenty of associated resources too - some major towing / icebreaking ships. Some may even characterize that episode of Canadian marine adventure to be the height of our accomplishments at sea. Many a story can be heard on the west coast, of the accomplishments or the lives impacted by the Gulf / Beaudrill experience.

I suspect it is not the end of Shell's experiments, but I am sure the accountants will be complaining soon.

[JK]

a shogun is a car?
I don't think the b10 is carried in a DB in the Arctic temperatures Jimmy S?

BC has a law that a certain percentage of diesel sold has to be B10, JimmyS. Sorry for that bit of regionalism.
I left about 3 months after the law came into affect. I know there was concern for the ships operating north and the destroyers with gas turbines.

[JFC]

These CAT engines can tolerate little to no water at all with such tight tolerances in order to get the injection pressures to meet current emmision reguilations. I have had that wonderful experience before.

Road Diesel in BC is low sulphur adn weighs in a B5 or a mere 5% bio-diesel.

Cheers,

[Wyatt]

I understand about PP requirements, at NTCL we never had issues with PP's. But one year about 7 seasons ago, NTCL purchased MDO on the world market with a set of specs that were to be met. The fuel came out of South America. It arrived in Vancouver then was transhipped to Tuk. Once there a test was done on the fuel and it was discovered to be missing a lubricity additive. Of course this was discovered after our vessels filled themselves with it. Here is an excerpt from Envirnment Canada and a meeting that was on Northern Fuel Requirements;
"[It is] uncertain about the potential impacts of the 15-ppm sulfur standard on fuel lubricity. There is evidence that the typical process used to remove sulfur from diesel fuel - hydrotreating - can impact lubricity depending on the severity of the treatment process and characteristics of the crude. Because refiners will likely rely on hydrotreating to achieve the proposed sulfur limit, there may be reductions in the concentration of those components of diesel fuel which contribute to adequate lubricity. As a result, the lubricity of some batches of fuel may be reduced compared to today's levels, resulting in an increased need for the use of lubricity additives in highway diesel fuel."

As noted in the May discussion document on the design of the regulations, one oil company (BP-Arco) has stated that "lubricity is addressed in all our products. We continue to work on optimizing lubricity for both performance and cost." It is expected that other companies will make similar efforts for lubricity, as well as the other needs of the fuels that they sell.

We were all contacted by the head office to start mixing lube oil into our fuel tanks. I did not like this hap-hazzard approach and chose to monitor the engines instead. We were running EMD 645 12's, an older engine with lots of slackness in its fuel pumps. We never experienced any problems, but on some of our other vessels, the Cat 399's were showing signs of big time trouble with fuel pumps. There were a number of vessels with new fuel injector units installed and these were seizing up. I understand they are quite different than the Cats on the Shell Vessel, but those engines were quite new as well.
This is just a thought, wonder whether we will ever find out the truth? Am listening to BBC here in the Bahamas and no one is asking questions as to why the tow vessel lost power.