eGreenShip Project Receives Funding under the NSRF!
FC submited in November 2009, in cooperation with AVACA Technologies S.A., the proposal "An integrated system for monitoring ship’s emissions and operating parameters with application to optimal management of the ship energy demands during operation [E-GREENSHIP]" for a research project under the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) in Greece. On 21-Jul-2010, GSRT published the results of the evaluation process, based on which eGreenShip was selected to receive funding. The project aims to develop an information system for monitoring ship exhaust gas emissions with application to optimal management of the energy operating parameters of the ship, assisting the energetic analysis of ship operation and its subsystems and supporting decision making procedures, both at operational - short term and planning - long term levels. As a main result of the automated detection of problems due to increased emissions and fuel consumption or adverse conditions encountered by the ship, an overall optimization of the system with respect to required energy and ship/fleet management procedures contributing to greening of ship operations is expected.
The E-GREENSHIP system will be based on data concerning the ship, the engine(s) and machinery (available from the design and test data sheets), and in case of significant or unusual variations from the standards it will inform (the ship crew and/or the shipping company) and provide action responses by proposing (short term) counter measures to correct or improve the observed problematic ship operation. A key feature of the present system will be its ability to take into account the effects of environmental (sea/wind conditions and other parameters; (see e.g., Barstow et al. 2003, Athanassoulis et al. 2005)∗ and calculate their effects on the ship energy consumption, exhaust gas emissions.
Furthermore, the storing and processing of ship operating parameters data will assist (in the longer term) the optimal decision making for ship operation and the scheduling of ship maintenance procedure (hull cleaning, propeller cleaning/polishing, engine and auxiliary equipment repair and/or maintenance, etc). In addition, in cases where the ship approaches sea/coastal areas with specific limits on pollutants/emissions or other operating parameters, the system will provide warnings in advance, providing adequate time to response prior entering these areas, enabling the crew to proceed to appropriate preparation/action steps (e.g., change fuel type, changes in engine operating mode to reduce the exhaust gas emissions, initiate exhaust-SOx scrubber or Selective Catalytic Reduction-SCR).
The proposed in the present project information system will be based on state-of-the-art software development techniques, such as complex event processing and enterprise application integration. The final system will be developed as an innovative technological approach, based on open source software and providing for dynamic and remote reprogramming and system upgrading.