LECTURE: Maersk Methanol Fueled Containerships – Design for Safe Operation and Maintenance
IMarEST TV recording by the Benelux Branch on the 5th April 2023. This webinar was presented by Ola Stråby of Maersk A/S.
In 2018 Maersk committed to an ambitious plan for decarbonising its entire business in the next few decades. The success of this heavily depends on decarbonising ocean shipping. Even with a decades-long time horizon that meant that very soon new ships would have to be built for sustainable fuel.
After careful evaluation, Maersk concluded that the best fuel choice in the near term was methanol. An order for one smaller dual fuel vessel was placed, and soon followed by additional orders for 18 large dual fuel vessels.
These are the first containerships being constructed for methanol fuel and very limited prior design experience was available at the time of ordering. The ships are now well underway in design and construction, with the first delivery in Q2 2023 and the larger vessels in early 2024.
Therefore, since 2020 Maersk, in cooperation with class, flag, equipment makes and shipyards, has been on a journey to take this high-level vision and transform it into a workable detail design that is first and foremost safe, but also space and cost-efficient as well as maintainable and operatable by a typical container ship crew.
This lecture provides insight into some of the challenges identified as well as novel solutions found for integrating methanol fuel on a containership. Many of these insights should be universally applicable but may be particularly relevant for cases where simultaneous low flashpoint fuel bunkering and other cargo handling operations are needed or where free deck space for hazardous equipment is at a premium.
About the Speaker
Ola Stråby is a Chartered Engineer and has an MSc in Naval Architecture from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. He has developed a wide general experience across several disciplines over a more than 25-year-long career spanning many marine fields such as defence, offshore and commercial shipping.
Major completed projects range from structural optimisation of carbon fibre structures, and the development of new structural concepts to machinery retrofit projects. He is also an active participant in various regulatory, mainly class rules, and reference groups.
In his current position as Senior Lead Naval Architect at Maersk A/S he is at the centre of the technical work to support Maersk’s transition to sustainable fuels as the subject matter expert for systems design and vessel integration of alternative fuel systems.
Watch Now (IMarEST Members only)