Cold Ironing

The maritime sector is important for the facilitation and growth of global trade. Currently, about 90% of the goods are transported by ships and as a result, the number of ships has risen, increasing the emissions related to shipping. Therefore, the sector is facing a continuous pressure to reduce the its emissions. Legislation so far mainly focuses on new and alternative fuels, electric propulsion or exhaust cleaning devices. These methods are significant for sailing vessels to reduce their environmental footprint. How about ports?

While at berth ships still demand energy for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, cargo handling etc. To supply the appropriate energy to these systems, generators are used which run mainly on heavy fuel oil or other bunkers. This is the primary source of air emissions from ships in ports today and must be taken into consideration, as it generates SOx, NOx, CO2 and particle discharge as well as noise and vibration. Therefore, the emissions of vessels at ports also contribute to complicate the atmospheric conditions in areas close to ports. To mitigate this problem a solution to that is shore connection or shore to ship power or alternative maritime power or as it is widely known Cold Ironing.

Cold ironing, is an alternative where berthed ships plug into an onshore power source that provides electrical power to it, while its main and auxiliary engines are turned off. This is not a new approach, but it dates back in the period that all ships were using coal fired engines. Specifically, when a ship was berthing at port, it did not have to continue to feed the fire, and the iron engines would cool down, going totally cold. This is from where this process took its name from.

During cold ironing, the ship’s power load is then transferred to the shore-side power supply without disrupting onboard services, while the ship loads or unloads its cargo. Studies have found that many environmental benefits are generated by this method and it can significantly improve the air quality, by reducing CO2 emissions. As the number of the countries becoming more and more aware of a clean environment is increasing, cold ironing finds more ground.

Heating is one of the processes with the higher energy demands, increasing the fuel consumption of generators and consequently increasing the emissions. At Heatmaster we know that. We can contribute to a cleaner maritime environment by suppling electric heaters with hot hater, thermal oil and steam systems, or combi boilers in order to cover the heating needs of the vessel. The required energy to operate our electric boilers while the ship at berth can be supplied by using the cold ironing method. Vessel will have a fully functional system without any emissions on board from the boilers.
Contact Heatmaster team for your customize solution.

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