Dominik Schneiter, WinGD’s Vice President R&D discusses improvements in operational performance for the engine maker’s customers in an interview with The Motorship.
Dominik Schneiter noted that the engine maker was continuing research into improving the performance of its current engine programme during an interview at Posidonia 2022 in Greece. He added that the engine designer was planning to launch a new 24/7 monitoring service for subscribing customers from July 2022 (see box).
A common thread connecting several of the advances is the engine designer’s new engine control system (WiCE), which is covered in a separate article in this month’s issue.
The new engine control system will offer certain advantages in terms of combustion management, and in optimising the engine’s operation.
Schneiter proudly referred to the optimisation of recirculated oxygen content entering WinGD’s X-DF 2.0 low-pressure dual-fuel engine via the low-pressure EGR system, as one of the significant advantages coordinated within the control system.
In the meantime, the new engine control system will create the option of introducing fully integrated control logics which are to a large extent model based, Schneiter added. This will allow the engine to optimise itself at whatever operation point.
“While the technology may not result in a significant increase in engine efficiency at the optimum point… such intelligent control can help you to always operate at the highest possible efficiency within the given limit of emissions and so on.”
The Motorship notes that this was likely to attract attention as shipowners were considering a range of different strategies to respond to upcoming emissions reduction regulations, including speed reductions.
Schneiter added that WinGD had already applied some of the insights gleaned from research into model-based control (where combustion and CFD simulation models to train the control systems of new engines) to improve engine control algorithms for existing customers.
“We don’t make a big fuss about it, as the benefits are hard to quantify, but its an area where there has been steady improvement in recent years.”
However, Schneiter expanded on the benefits that ship owners can expect to see.
“Another potential benefit of the introduction of intelligent controls is that we expect to see an improvement in the performance of ship systems towards the end of their five year overhaul period.”
Traditionally, there has been a difference in the performance of engines over the five years between dry docks “reflecting carbon build up and fouling on tools and injection equipment and things like that.” One of the possibilities of WinGD’s intelligent control system is that we can recognise the fouling and change the parameters to mitigate the accumulation, Schneiter noted.
In other words, the fouling induced fuel penalty will be effectively reduced over time, which will improve the vessel’s fuel efficiency over a five-year timespan. It will also effectively eliminate the risk of fuel penalties from worn engine components that some vessels used to suffer in the past, as accurate performance monitoring would permit instantaneous identification of faults.
In the future, Schneiter notes that the improvement in engine performance, along with improved insight into the condition of machinery offered by sensor technology, would feed into wider discussions about pushing out the dry dock period beyond five years.
In conclusion, Schneiter anticipates that the new WiCE engine control system will be supplemented by increasingly accurate engine control models. “Integrating a hybrid propulsion system, you will have a propulsion system that learns to optimise itself over time. That’s exactly where we want to go. Because at the beginning, when everything is new, everything performs, but after three to five years, it might diverge. But this intelligent system can start to correct itself.”
Schneiter noted that WinGD was launching a 24/7 remote monitoring tool at the beginning of July 2022. The service will extend the scope of WinGD’s integrated Digital Expert service (WiDE), allowing the service to proactively offer insights based on a remote condition-based monitoring service, from an office based in South Korea. The service would not just identify parts that needed replacement, but also provide support on more efficient operation of machinery for WinGD customers.
