John Kokarakis, VP Engineering, Bureau Veritas presentation during the 2015 GREEN4SEA Forum The tsunami of emission related regulations and the need for environmental friendliness also dictates the utilization of alternate fuels less polluting than HFO. The star player is LNG but  not the only player though. Future ships will burn a variety of fuels; hydrogen, synthetic fuels and biofuels will be chosen depending on the characteristic of the ship.   Nowadays, we are facing an utterly confusing and conflicting tsunami of fuel regulations. Fuel is the most expensive OPEX item and plays an important role in defining the future of the shipping industry. The drivers for new marine fuels are: regulations, financial considerations and available technology. In the future, there is going to be coexistence of multiple fuels. Be aware that the wrong fuel choice has major impact on commercial performance of the vessel. Pioneer owners may be confronted with unforeseen technical issues costing time and money. However shipping thrives through innovation and technology development. The fact that the charterer pays the fuel removes the motivation from the owners to use alternative fuels. Lack of bunkering facilities and supply chains are barriers for the introduction of new “exotic” fuels. Due to...

There are many critical elements in relation to the design, selection and installation of BWTS. The process is a quadric-modal one which starts with the selection and the design study, followed by detailed study and installation. However, we will confront a lot of challenges in the process. What is critical is what lies below the iceberg. Had the Convention been validated tomorrow, we would need to do 40-50 retrofits every day until the end of 2017. Having that number in mind, it seems that we should not over emphasize the selection process. Unfortunately, we don't have feedback from BWTS already installed. We are dealing with a case of public pressure putting the regulations ahead of technology. We can apply advanced selection techniques like fuzzy- logic or multi-criteria decision analysis, or simpler statistical grading of  questions which can be grouped  related to technical, health and safety , financial, operation, installation and maintenance considerations. The one million question is '' are we going to have the time to go through this grading and selection process?'' The installation questions we have is where to place the system, how to integrate it with  the remaining machinery and what to do. We have to forget...