Being a civil/survey guy, I deal mostly in dirt and asphalt, but I really love learning a bit more about other disciplines, and appreciate good general engineering principles. Somehow I missed episode one, and I'm going to go back and watch that after this.
I wonder, when designing ships, do you ever take into consideration decommissioning or plan for life extention programs? Have you been part of such programs your self?
I have not been part of that myself. But yes, larger ships especially consider decommissioning. There is a program called the Green Passport which specifically considers all the hazardous materials that went into constructing the ship and tries to limit those materials. Unfortunately, that is a small step. Overall, ship scrapping is still very hazardous, because it's cheaper to ignore safety concerns. There are safe ship scrapping yards out there. But they have a hard time beating the better prices from the less ethical yards. As far as life extension, I did work on that with an old ferry. And I have seen designs that consider this from day 1. Life extension usually requires two things: 1. Survey the hull and replace steel that corroded too far. 2. Replace or recondition old machinery. The biggest item is the main engines. Main engine overall can be a sensitive matter. Ships only need to meet environmental limits from the time they were built. Except if you do a major overall, then you are required to meet current environmental limits. This becomes especially important for the main engines. It becomes a balance act to decide how many pieces of the main engine we can replace before its considered a full overall, requiring a new engine.
I figured that would be the case, but I had to ask. I work for a company that specializes in mobile machining and decommissioning, so we are involved in both decommissioning and life extention of all kinds of equipment and structures, many of them ships. It inevitably always feels like an afterthought, and often requires specialized tools to be built, that's where I come in. So obviously my samples are greatly biased. 😅
Thank you
Thank you Nick!
Being a civil/survey guy, I deal mostly in dirt and asphalt, but I really love learning a bit more about other disciplines, and appreciate good general engineering principles. Somehow I missed episode one, and I'm going to go back and watch that after this.
I wonder, when designing ships, do you ever take into consideration decommissioning or plan for life extention programs? Have you been part of such programs your self?
I have not been part of that myself. But yes, larger ships especially consider decommissioning. There is a program called the Green Passport which specifically considers all the hazardous materials that went into constructing the ship and tries to limit those materials. Unfortunately, that is a small step. Overall, ship scrapping is still very hazardous, because it's cheaper to ignore safety concerns. There are safe ship scrapping yards out there. But they have a hard time beating the better prices from the less ethical yards.
As far as life extension, I did work on that with an old ferry. And I have seen designs that consider this from day 1. Life extension usually requires two things:
1. Survey the hull and replace steel that corroded too far.
2. Replace or recondition old machinery. The biggest item is the main engines. Main engine overall can be a sensitive matter. Ships only need to meet environmental limits from the time they were built. Except if you do a major overall, then you are required to meet current environmental limits. This becomes especially important for the main engines. It becomes a balance act to decide how many pieces of the main engine we can replace before its considered a full overall, requiring a new engine.
I figured that would be the case, but I had to ask. I work for a company that specializes in mobile machining and decommissioning, so we are involved in both decommissioning and life extention of all kinds of equipment and structures, many of them ships. It inevitably always feels like an afterthought, and often requires specialized tools to be built, that's where I come in. So obviously my samples are greatly biased. 😅
Thank you for this video! Keep up the good work. 🛳🚢