Seacor Crewboats "Eliminators" Some Maintenance Costs
A crewboat is designed to transport supplies and personnel to offshore oil rigs.
Loading the cargo must be quick and efficient.
The last thing the crew wants to worry about is whether they have enough storage space for the engine lube oil filters.
Furthermore, they don't need the hassle of disposing of used lube oil filters while at the docks.
Seacor Smit Inc. found that Alfa Laval's Eliminator, an automatic self-cleaning filter system, helps to save time and money by eliminating the need for spin on cartridge filters, while also saving the crew the messy off-hour work. Seacor started using the Eliminator filter about four years ago on K.V50 engines. Today, the company has 25 KV50 engines and five KV38 engines, all equipped with the Eliminator filter.
The most significant benefit to Seacor is the elimination of the cartridge filters; crucial for ships operating in remote areas such as Africa and South America.
"The logistical challenges to get filters to these vessels are enormous. The Eliminators allow us to cut the amount of filters shipped to the vessels by about 25-30 percent" said Joe McCall, Operation Manager, Seacor Marine Inc.
Standard cartridge filters for a KV engine will cost $3,200 per engine per year. Combined with cartridge disposal costs of approximately $1,250 per year per vessel, the savings with the Eliminator become very tangible. With 30 engines equipped with the Eliminator, Seacor has reduced the money spent on cartridge filters by $96,000 per year.
Another source for savings is reduced maintenance hours. Instead or replacing six or seven cartridge filters (typical on a Cummins KV engine), the maintenance crew has to replace only a sludge collecting paper in the Eliminator centrifuge. The filter replace- ment time is reduced from 1 hour to 15 minutes per engine. While the cartridge filters had to be replaced after 250 hours of service, the centrifuge maintenance interval is 1,000 to 1,500 hours. This reduces the labor required per engine for filter maintenance from 20 hrs/year with cartridges to just over 1 hr/year.
The Design The Eliminator consists of an Alfa Laval Moatti automatic, self-cleaning filter and an Alfa Laval disc-stack centrifuge in a single, compact integrated housing. These two sections comprise a complete engine-mounted oil cleaning system. The full-flow section utilizes a series of stainless steel mesh elements to filter the oil and protect the engine. A small portion of the filtered oil is used to backflush sections of these elements to prevent dirt from accumulating on the screen.
The backflushed oil containing the impurities is then fed to the separator section of the Eliminator, which is a very efficient disc-stacked centrifuge that cleans oil down to the two micron level. All dirt removed in the full-flow section eventually is deposited in the centrifuge sludge where it is removed. The only maintenance required is replacement of the sludge collection paper in the separator.
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Content
- SSI Concerns Continue page: 5
- Signed Confessions page: 9
- OMI to Pay $4.2M for Waste Oil Dumping page: 14
- NASSCO Delivers Alaskan Frontier page: 17
- Alabama Shipyard to Build Hopper Dredge page: 17
- Merwede Tapped for Navy, Commercial Contracts page: 18
- FBM Babcock Wins U.S. Contract page: 19
- New Vessels from VT Halmatic page: 19
- ABCO Launches Three New Boats page: 20
- IR Generates $64M in Orders page: 24
- Sideways to Swimmers: Unusual Tank Testing page: 26
- Current Uses of FEA in Shipbuilding page: 30
- BMT Aims to Improve Vessel Evac page: 32
- Flensburg Makes its Mark Again page: 36
- SMM 2004: Ready for the World page: 36
- German Shipyards Propose Merger page: 37
- Voith to Exhibit VWT Baut at SIMM page: 37
- Blohm + Voss Repair Wins Business page: 38
- Methane Arctic Benefits from German Technology page: 39
- Becker Kort Rudder Nozzles for Improved Maneuverability page: 40
- Payer Presented Cross of the Order of Merit page: 42
- Xantic: Focus on Integrated Solutions page: 44
- A Benchmark in Electronic Fuel Injection page: 45
- Q&A with Wartsila CTO Matti Kleimola page: 46
- Seacor Crewboats "Eliminators" Some Maintenance Costs page: 49
- (Fuel) Cells of Endeavor page: 50
- Containerships: When Will One Engine Not Be Enough? page: 52
- Most Powerful Common- Rail Engine Passes Test page: 54
- Clean Concept for Brostrom Tankers page: 54
- Canadian Towing Firm Refits for the Future page: 56
- TOR: The Next-Generation Turbocharger page: 57
- Duramax Marine Creates Largest Ever DuraCooler page: 58
- ABS: Large Ship Hull Deflections Impact the Shaft Alignment page: 60
- The Great Maritime Disruption... that Never Happened page: 66
- New Positioning Technique Helps Cut Costs in Deepwater GOM page: 76
- U.S. Ferry Market Prospects Looking Up page: 77
- "Ship Design and Construction" page: 81