The ongoing practice of slow steaming is likely to impact supply chain management, maritime routes, and the use of transshipment hubs. Adopting slow steaming requires the “de-rating” of the main engine to the new speed and new power level (around 70%), which involves the timing of fuel injection, adjusting exhaust valves, and exchanging other mechanical components in the engine.
#Fuel consumption full
Slow steaming also involves adapting engines designed for a specific optimal speed of around 22-25 knots, implying that they run at around 80% of full power capacity for that speed. Slow steaming practices have become the new normal to which users must adapt. However, in an environment of higher fossil fuel prices, maritime shipping companies are opting for slow steaming for cost-cutting purposes but using the environmental agenda to justify them further. It was expected that as growth resumed and traffic picked up, maritime shipping companies would return to normal cruising speeds. It enabled them to accommodate additional ships with a similar frequency of port calls. As a response, maritime shipping companies adopted slow steaming and even extra slow steaming services on several of their pendulum routes. The practice of slow steaming emerged during the financial crisis of 2008-2009 as international trade and the demand for containerized shipping plummeted at the same time as new capacity ordered during boom years was coming online. However, the level of service is commercially unacceptable, so it is unlikely that maritime shipping companies would adopt such speeds. The lowest speed technically possible, since lower speeds do not lead to any significant additional fuel economy. It can be applied to specific short-distance routes. A substantial decline in speed to achieve a minimal fuel consumption level while still maintaining a commercial service. Also known as super slow steaming or economical speed. This is likely to become the dominant operational speed as more than 50% of the global container shipping capacity operated under such conditions as of 2011. Running ship engines below capacity to save fuel consumption but at the expense of an additional travel time, particularly over long distances (compounding effect). Most containerships are designed to travel at speeds around 24 knots. It also reflects the hydrodynamic limits of the hull to perform within acceptable fuel consumption levels.
Represents the optimal cruising speed a containership and its engine have been designed to travel at. While shipping lines would prefer consuming the least amount of fuel by adopting lower speeds, this advantage must be mitigated with longer shipping times as well as assigning more ships on a pendulum service to maintain the same port call frequency. At 21 knots, this consumption drops to about 150 tons per day, a 33% decline. For instance, while a containership of around 8,000 TEU would consume about 225 tons of bunker fuel per day at 24 knots. Proceedings of the 2009 International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) Conference, June, Copenhagen, Denmark.įuel consumption by a containership is mostly a function of ship size and cruising speed, which follows an exponential function above 14 knots. Carriou (2009) “Fuel surcharge practices of container shipping lines: Is it about cost recovery or revenue making?”. Fuel Consumption by Containership Size and Speed
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