Page 42: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 2022)

THE PATH TO ZERO AIR LUBRICATION

MPS co-founder and CTO Pieter Kapteijn with a 1-m section of a FluidicAL band with 8 oscillators.

Image courtesy Marine Performance Systems

Floating on Bubbles

Fluidical Air Lubrication

By Greg Trauthwein luidical air lubrication is a system designed to holes and it creates bubbles. It’s the only way in which you generate a carpet of bubbles to help ships cut fuel can create masses of bubbles of the right size for air lubrica- consumption and emissions. Pieter Kapteijn, co- tion in the volumes that you need and distribute those over the

Ffounder, Marine Performance Systems, discusses bottom of the ship. That is the core to the idea.” the unique design and operational bene? ts. Idea in hand, MPS started to test different oscillators, and

With a long career in oil and gas, Kapteijn and his part- found one that Kapteijn claims yielded 70-80% drag reduc- ners “realized very early on that we could have a good idea tion. “So we knew we were onto something good. So then about air lubrication and how to do it differently, because the we said let’s combine all these oscillators, so we have eight core idea of air lubrication has been around for a long time, of these oscillators per meter of wing, the wing which guides researched for more than 100 years. We added the ‘? uidical’ the air into the oscillators and distributes the air underneath component to it, and that makes all the difference.” For the the ? at of bottom of the ship,” said Kapteijn. Another differ- past few years MPS has been working with maritime faculty entiator for the MPS system is the presence of bands of wings of Delft University to test the idea of combining traditional air along the ship hull, to keep the air lubrication uniform along lubrication with ? uidical. the entire hull. “Our system is so cheap and so cost effective “In our system, the air is injected into the boundary layer, is that we can actually ? t multiple of these bands underneath but it’s being injected through oscillators,” said Kapteijn. the ship. We create the air layer with the ? rst band, and then “These oscillators are little devices that create a wave of a we maintain the air layer over the full length of the ship all the pulse of gas, of air. The air is then fed through a number of way to the stern,” said Kapteijn. 42 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • December 2022

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