Using AI to drive down fuel costs and emissions

Rolls-Royce Group sales manager for offshore, Phil Kordic, thinks monitoring data from the vessel and propulsion system enables managers to maximise uptime, track and optimise fuel consumption, measure torque on shafts and identify peak performance or potential issues.

Owners can use data analytics to “manage vessel and propulsion performance and lower fuel consumption and emissions by working the vessel more efficiently,” Mr Kordic says.

Using AI and machine learning, owners can improve effectiveness of their condition-based maintenance by remotely monitoring performance of engines in real time.

“Shipboard information systems combine all these together to achieve the operator’s goals,” says Mr Kordic.

“This monitors health of the vessel and propulsion, generates notifications and alerts that can be investigated and maximises uptime,” he says. Information is sent ashore using the vessel’s satellite communications equipment for onshore managers to monitor performance across a fleet.

While data quality is important, so is the human resources required to interpretate data and AI-generated insights and verify results.

Caterpillar Marine’s strategic manager, Nathan Ankersen, says AI is always being developed or adjusted to become an onboard tool to help seafarers, managers and vessel owners. He emphasises the importance of human oversight of AI to prevent errors and make better decisions. “If you are only trusting machine data or AI data, you are vulnerable,” he cautions, stressing the necessity of historical data and human validation in machine learning models.

“Use AI and the human element to understand what to do with insights from analytics, such as predictive maintenance,” Mr Ankersen adds. “We employ machine learning analytics and feed the model with historical and real-time data,” he says. “We then need people to act on the information, such as it the analytics predicts valve failure.”  

AI can also be used to understand what crew are doing on vessels and monitor fuel consumption and bunkering.

Ascenz Marorka business development director says AI is used to compare performance of vessels and crews across a fleet and to “challenge crew to declare what the vessel and they are doing to optimise operations.”

Analysis applications will monitor in real time bunkering and fuel flow, and provide an overview of onboard operations, automatically generate reports and alerts and enable operators to optimise transit speeds and engine loads.

VPS general manager for the Middle East and Africa, Dirk de Bruyn, says owners are challenging crews to use these applications to outperform each other on reducing fuel consumption and emissions.

“Digitalisation is reducing operating costs and analytics helps crew and operators to draw insights and act upon them,” says Mr de Bruyn. “AI turns data into actionable insights to reduce environmental footprints and for predictive maintenance.”

During Q3 2024, VPS and P&I Club NorthStandard launched the Fuel Insights digital platform to provide real-time fuel procurement, testing and quality information to vessel owners.

Users can gain information on bunker fuel, including quality risks, off-specs and calorific value, chemical contamination and specific cold-flow parameters, from a database of tests and validations.

NorthStandard members will get “easy access to global fuel statistics, and tools to trade with confidence by managing risk and reducing claims in one of the most challenging areas of ship management,” says NorthStandard global head of loss prevention, Colin Gillespie.