Captain Of Chaos – Masters Of Luck And Rule Tyrants
by John Konrad (gCaptain) Over the past few years a few of my fellow captains and I have been working on new ways to teach Bridge Resource Management (BRM). We...
Lloyd’s Register’s Global Marine Risk Adviser, Vince Jenkins, takes an optimistic view of a technical issue in the latest issue of Lloyd’s Register’s Horizons.
The location of storage tanks is a key issue for shipowners, designers, builders and classification societies as the industry explores the potential of
using LNG to power the global fleet. It is particularly important on vessels such as cruise ships, containerships and ferries where there is little or no alternative to LNG bunker space within or below a vessel’s accommodation area.
Views vary from the opponents who say it should not even be considered to those who believe it should be possible to engineer such a system safely. Obviously there are always trade-offs to be made. In this case, the environmental benefit of using LNG as fuel needs to be weighed against a factual or perceived view that safety will suffer.
I have in fact thought about the challenge of tank location from three different perspectives:
So can we safely incorporate LNG tanks into or below shipboard accommodation?
We undoubtedly can. The cost of achieving it may be significant, but the technology and design capability is certainly about to achieve it.
Class societies are a keystone of safety in the marine industry. They also need to be visionary from time to time. In Lloyd’s Register’s case we are a charity and everyone in society is our stakeholder. Hence we need to provide a framework that will allow innovation – while ensuring the balance between environmental gain and safety is duly considered.
In the past, Lloyd’s Register and other class societies have achieved this by developing prescriptive rules. There is a move to a more goal-based approach to drive rule development. And as this article goes to print, this is exactly what we are doing on the subject of LNG tank placement within or under accommodation.
We cannot yet judge what the outcome of such development work will be, but we are certainly looking at it to enable such technology to be embraced within the industry.
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