Port Water Research Articles

Exploring the effectiveness of ECA policies in reducing pollutant emissions from merchant ships in Shanghai port waters

Using the AIS data in 2017, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of five ECA policies on pollutant emissions from merchant ships in Shanghai Port waters. Results show that the estimated annual emissions from merchant ships including cargo ships, container ships and tankers are 3.4029 × 104 tons for NOx, 2.1037 × 104 tons for SO2, 2.291 × 103 tons for PM2.5, and 2.921 × 103 tons for PM10 in 2017, respectively. Impact analysis results highlight the fact that effects of each ECA policy vary significantly among different merchant ship types and different water areas. The amount of pollutant emissions from cargo ships (e.g., SO2 and PM2.5) is most affected by the ECA policy. However, the NOx emissions are not significantly changed under different ECA policies. Results also show that future ECA policies could cause a much greater decrease of pollutant emissions in water areas of Yangshan and Wusong.

Environmental Management System for the Analysis of Oil Spill Risk Using Probabilistic Simulations. Application at Tarragona Monobuoy

Oil spill accidents during port operations are one of the main hydrocarbon pollution threats for coastal waters. Appropriate environmental risk assessment and pollution events management tools are needed to achieve sustainability and environmental protection in port activity. Recent developments in monitoring techniques and accurate meteo-oceanographic prediction systems have been implemented in many ports, providing tools for environmental management. A novel method based on meteo-oceanographic operational services, in conjunction with Monte Carlo experiments using an oil spill model, is implemented to perform probabilistic maps of potential pollution events. Tarragona port area was chosen as the study case for three reasons: it accommodates a hub of petrochemical industry, the availability of high-resolution wind and water current data, and previous studies at the area offer the possibility to check the results’ accuracy. The interpretation of the impact probability maps reveals a specific pattern explained by the mean hydrodynamic conditions and the energetic north-westerly wind conditions. The impact probability maps may enhance efficiency in the environmental management of port waters and nearby coastal areas, reducing the negative impact of pollutant discharges.

Study on Establishing Safety Standard System for Water Transport Engineering

Based on the present situation of safety standards for water transportation engineering in China, this paper comprehensively compares the advantages and disadvantages of domestic and foreign standards and standards system, and studies and builds the framework diagram of safety standards for water transportation engineering. Get to know and sort out the safety production standards for water transportation projects that have been issued in China. It discusses the new situation of the development of safe production in China, and the requirements of safety standards, safety standardization and safety standard system in the water transportation industry. The comparative study of water transport engineering standards and standards system at home and abroad is carried out. According to the requirements of relevant standards, this paper discusses the construction of the safety standard architecture of water transportation engineering, studies and proposes the safety standard architecture of water transportation engineering, which is composed of three dimensions: the type of water transportation engineering, the stages of the whole life cycle of the engineering, and the content involved in safety production, and analyzes the advantages of this architecture. This paper provides basic research for establishing the safety standard system table of water transportation engineering. The research results are of great significance to promote the establishment and perfection of the safety professional standard system, and to promote the construction of safety standardization in water transportation and port industry.

Long-term Changes in Community of Planktonic Algae of the Northeastern Black Sea (2005-2011)

Phytoplankton dynamics in bays and open waters of the northeastern Black Sea was studied in 2005-2011. Species composition comprised 11 classes and 210 species including 19 potentially toxic species and 5 new records for the study area. The maximum species richness was found among dinoflagellates (96 species) and diatoms (78); other major taxonomic groups were represented by a small number of species (2 to 10). The highest abundance of planktonic algae was observed in the Novorossiysk port waters (5.1x105 cells/ L; 1.08 g/m3). Algal abundance and biomass in the bays of Anapa, Gelendzhik and Tuapse were 2 to 5 times less than in the bay of Novorossiysk. Smallcelled mesosaprobic species of diatoms (Skeletonema, Leptocylindrus, Thalassionema and Chaetoceros), euglenophyceans (Eutreptia lanowii), cyanobacteria (Lyngbya and Oscillatoria) and mixotrophic dinoflagellates (Gymnodinium, Heterocapsa, Gyrodinium and Prorocentrum) were found in the bays. Abundance and biomass in the open sea in front of the bays were 1.5-2 times higher than those observed within the bays. The minimum abundance and biomass were observed in the open sea (5.4x104 cells/L, 0.28 g/m3) and the Kerch Strait (9.8x104 cells/L, 0.186 g/m3). In these areas the most significant part of the population (34-40% of phytoplankton abundance) was composed of the nanoplanktonic prymnesiophycean Emiliania huxleyi, the large-celled diatoms Proboscia alata and Pseudosolenia calcar-avis and dinoflagellates of the genus Protoperidinium (up to 45% of phytoplankton biomass).

Risk Assessment and Decision Support for Sustainable Traffic Safety in Hong Kong Waters

Hong Kong's port is one of the busiest in the world. Such heavy traffic is associated with a high accident rate. The present study uses Bayesian Networks to analyze accident risk in Hong Kong waters using 331 accident reports during the period of 1999-2017. The methodology adopted is comprised of an analysis of present literature and expert judgments for the determination of nodes and states. The calculation of probabilities and conditional probability tables (CPT) were done based solely on the real data in accident reports through parameter estimation. The results indicate that the highest portion of accidents was categorized as “other” with a probability of 0.5174. The majority of such accidents took place in port waters. The second highest category was “collision” with a probability of 0.2256. Both of these accident types were associated with the highest fatality rate-one or two people killed. Poor judgment, negligence and insufficient training were found to be the most influential factors with regard to human actions. The highest rate of injuries was associated with passenger ships. The results offer valuable insights into various accident scenarios which involve setting evidence at different states of consequences and accident types to determine the most prominent contributing factors. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to recognize the most critical variables. This study should prove useful to decision and policy makers seeking to enhance sustainable safety in maritime traffic operations.

Probabilistic Approach to Determination of Oil Spill Domains at Port and Sea Water Areas

Probabilistic Approach to Determination of Oil Spill Domains at Port and Sea Water Areas

Underwater landscapes condition assessment in the Nakhodka bay (sea of Japan) port water area

The diversity of natural resources and favorable economic and geographical location have always ensured a high degree of the coastal zone development. This is particularly pronounced in port areas, where there is not only a high concentration of production facilities, but also a high population density, leading to conflict situations and social tensions. Underwater landscapes monitoring results in the coal terminals area are presented. Contamination of bottom grounds by oil products and heavy metals has been noted. Marine bottom sediments are an active accumulator of contaminants which, when entering the marine area either independently or as a result of sorption on suspended particles of organic and mineral origin, gradually settle to the bottom. This makes them a potential source of secondary contamination of the water body. Excess of the maximum permissible concentrations for such indicators as easily oxidizing organics, phenols, petroleum products, and suspended substances in the bottom water horizon has been detected. Comparing the research results both in the bay head and at its outlet, it is necessary to note slight differences. The content of contaminating components in the tested biota samples has been found to correspond to the technical mariculture. An important parameter of the sustainable state landscape is not only the presence and diversity of biota, but also the concentration of major pollutants in it. Unstable dynamics of heavy metal concentration in hydrobiont tissues has been observed. It should be noted that the concentration of some pollutants, such as copper, chromium and cadmium, are slightly higher in biota living at the exit from the bay, than the one at the bay head. There is a change in the structure of landscape complexes: the control points are characterized by a high variety of benthos but decrease in the projective coverage by algae. The underwater landscape result analysis has showed that port facilities operating in the area under consideration have an impact on the environment corresponding to the production and technological process

Покровско-Якутский водный узел на реке Лене: современные деформации и управление русловыми процессами

The article considers the conditions of conjugate branches’ system transformation into parallel-branched channel, which are the most complex morphologically (by the mode of deformations and management) on the example of the Pokrovsko-Yakutsky section of the middle Lena River basin in the 21st century. It may arise from the general increase in the Lena River’s water content and thawing frozen soils (composing shallow waters and near-shore shallows), as well as from the development of sleeves with unstable channel. At the same time, local conditions encouraged to the formation of a complex single (three-arm) branching at the beginning of the expansion of the valley bottom and the channel below city of Pokrovsk, the preservation of a straight unbranched channel upstream, the channel of the same type below the Tabaga Cape and alternating one-side branching at the end of the site. The modern riverbed reformation after the changes occurred consists in the transgressive displacement of floodplainisland massifs, intensive banks’ erosion, and the sediment accumulation zones’ formation. This has led to the significant complications in the river water usage (including water intake and port water areas’ sedimentation, creation an unfavorable environment in the port approaches area, berths and industrial infrastructure) and to creation of an emergency situation at the coastal infrastructure facilities. The revealed channel deformations’ regularities on the basis of long-term and modern researches and hydrodynamic modeling allowed to develop and justify the complex scheme of channel processes’ management, which implementation will allow to reduce or neutralize their adverse or dangerous manifestations.

Pokrovsko-Yakutsky reach of the Lena River: transformation of complex conjugated channel, recent deformations and management of channel changes

The article considers the conditions of conjugate branches system transformation into parallel-branched channel, which are the most complex morphologically (by the mode of deformations and management) on the example of the Pokrovsko-Yakutsky section of the middle Lena River basin in the 21st century. It may arise from the general increase in the Lena Rivers water content and thawing frozen soils (composing shallow waters and near-shore shallows), as well as from the development of sleeves with unstable channel. At the same time, local conditions encouraged to the formation of a complex single (three-arm) branching at the beginning of the expansion of the valley bottom and the channel below city of Pokrovsk, the preservation of a straight unbranched channel upstream, the channel of the same type below the Tabaga Cape and alternating one-side branching at the end of the site. The modern riverbed reformation after the changes occurred consists in the transgressive displacement of floodplain-island massifs, intensive banks erosion, and the sediment accumulation zones formation. This has led to the significant complications in the river water usage (including water intake and port water areas sedimentation, creation an unfavorable environment in the port approaches area, berths and industrial infrastructure) and to creation of an emergency situation at the coastal infrastructure facilities. The revealed channel deformations regularities on the basis of long-term and modern researches and hydrodynamic modeling allowed to develop and justify the complex scheme of channel processes management, which implementation will allow to reduce or neutralize their adverse or dangerous manifestations.

Investigation of water injection benefits on downsized boosted direct injection spark ignition engine

Engine downsizing and boosting are key technologies to achieve the increasingly stringent emissions standards for spark ignition (SI) engines. However, knock is a major obstacle inhibiting further downsizing of SI engines. Water injection is a promising technology that has regained attention recently to solve the knock problem. In this paper, a 1.5L turbocharged gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine was modified by installing a water port injection (WPI) system on the intake manifold. The WPI system was modified from a GDI system and deionized water was pressured to 50 bar in a water tank by compressed nitrogen. The effect of WPI on engine combustion and emissions performance were experimentally investigated under different water/gasoline volume percentages and WPI timings. The results show that WPI has great potential in suppressing engine knock. At original engine setting (without adjustment of spark timing), all the combustion indexes related to knock are decreased by WPI, including maximum in-cylinder pressure (Pmax) and maximum pressure rise rate (Rmax). The flame kernel formation process (CA0-5), initiation combustion duration (CA0-10), early combustion duration (CA0-50) and major combustion duration (CA0-90) are deteriorated, resulting in decreased indicated mean effective pressure (IMEP) and thermal efficiency. By properly advancing spark timing, the combustion process can be improved, allowing the engine to achieve higher Pmax and better combustion phases without occurrence of knock. It is also found that the water/gasoline volume percentage should be kept within a proper range (30% in this study) because over WPI can lead to deterioration of combustion and pollutant emissions. WPI can effectively reduce the production of NO and CO emissions, while HC emissions are increased with the rise of water/gasoline volume percentage.

Global Comparison of the Bacterial Communities of Bilge Water, Boat Surfaces, and External Port Water.

In the past, ballast water has been a key vector in the ship-mediated dispersal of invasive species. Here, we evaluate the potential for port microorganisms to enter and colonize the hull and bilge water of ships. Due to the small size and ubiquitous nature of bacteria, they also have the potential to be spread through hull fouling and bilge water discharge. The goal of this study was to identify the extent to which the boat microbial community is shaped by the microbial community in the port water where the boat spends most of its time. Here, we compared the microbial communities of the hull and bilge compartments of 20 boats to those of the port water in 20 different ports in five regions around the world. We found that there was a significant difference in microbial diversity between boat and port microbial communities. Despite these differences, we found that Cyanobacteria were present at high abundances in the bilge water of most vessels. Due to the limited light in the bilge, the presence of Cyanobacteria suggests that port microorganisms can enter the bilge. Using source-tracking software, we found that, on average, 40% of the bilge and 52% of the hull microbial communities were derived from water. These findings suggest that the bilge of a vessel contains a diverse microbial community that is influenced by the port microbial community and has the potential to serve as an underappreciated vector for dispersal of life.IMPORTANCE Invasive species have been a worldwide problem for many years. However, the potential for microorganisms to become invasive is relatively underexplored. As the tools to study bacterial communities become more affordable, we are able to perform large-scale studies and examine bacterial communities in higher resolution than was previously practical. This study looked at the potential for bacteria to colonize both boat surfaces and bilge water. We describe the bacterial communities on boats in 20 shipping ports in five regions around the world, describing how these microorganisms were similar to microorganisms found in port water. This suggests that the water influences the bacterial community of a boat and that microorganisms living on a boat could be moved from place to place when the boat travels.

Real-time assessment and prediction on maritime risk state on the Arctic Route

ABSTRACTRecently, the Arctic Route has become busier with the continuous melting of Arctic ice. However, navigation on the Arctic Route would be much more complex than in normal water as harsh environmental conditions, such as ice-covered water and scarce costal ports that may cause more uncertainty. Nowadays, with the rapid development of sensors on board, more related data has become available. Thus, implementing comprehensive Arctic maritime risk assessment is urgent and necessary in practice. This study proposes an Arctic maritime risk state assessment method including real-time risk state assessment and risk prediction. Specifically, real-time observation samples’ numerical risk state would be firstly obtained with projection pursuit method from 10 risk indicators. Due to the fuzzy uncertainty of single observation set, information diffusion would be applied to provide diffusion estimation on risk probability distribution in order to depict risk state precisely. Also, the accumulated distribution can be regarded as the risk prediction for next time slot and risk entropy is introduced to depict risk tendency directly. Case study based on ‘Yongsheng’ is conducted to demonstrate and verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The findings can be useful for the operators and management on board during the Arctic voyage.

Design features for Arctic ports berths for accepting the ships with a deep draft

Construction of new Arctic ports is a complex scientific and technical challenge. The experience extends to the berths that can accept the vessels with a small draft only during the summer navigation period. Commercial efficiency of shipping in the Arctic seas is possible only with year-round use of large-tonnage vessels of high ice class with a draft of 12 meters or more. The Arctic seas basin is mostly shallow, and the main transport task is the regular export of liquid natural gas and crude oil by shuttle ships. We analyze a currently used berth structures and their operational features. It has been revealed that the berths of the overpass type on piles of shells with a concrete grillage require additional ice protection structures in the port water area, since power loads from the vessel mooring and ice may be critical. The infrastructure of the modern marine port in the Arctic should combine with production and logistics capabilities, since the internal transportation of goods is labor intensive. A mooring structure from the arrays of concrete gravity caisson wharf is proposed, which can be quickly constructed and they can accommodate additional equipment for transporting or transferring cargo. The studies are performed at the Department of Hydraulic Port Construction in Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping.

Hydrogeochemical and microbiological effects of simulated recharge and drying within a 2D meso-scale aquifer.

Oscillating cycles of dewatering (termed drying) and rewetting during managed aquifer recharge (MAR) are used to maintain infiltration rates and could also exert an influence on subsurface microbial structure and respiratory processes. Despite this practice, little knowledge is available about changes to microbial community structure and trace organic chemical biodegradation potential in MAR systems under these conditions. A biologically active two-dimensional (2D) synthetic MAR system equipped with automated sensors (temperature, water pressure, conductivity, soil moisture, oxidation-reduction potential) and embedded water and soil sampling ports was used to test and model these important subsurface processes at the meso-scale. The fate and transport of the antiepileptic drug carbamazepine, the antibiotics sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim, and the flame retardant tris (2-chloroethyl) phosphate were simulated using the finite element analysis model, FEFLOW. All of these compounds exhibit moderate to poor biodegradability in MAR systems. Within the operational MAR scenario tested, three episodic drying cycles spanning between 18 and 24 days were conducted over a period of 184 days. Notably, cessation of flow and partial dewatering of the 2D synthetic aquifer during dry cycles caused no measurable decrease in soil moisture content beyond the near-surface layer. The episodic flow introduction and dewatering cycles in turn had little impact on overall trace organic chemical biotransformation behavior and soil microbial community structure. However, spatial differences in oxidation-reduction potential and soil moisture were both identified as significant environmental predictors for microbial community structure in the 2D synthetic aquifer.

CFD Analysis of Port Water Injection in a GDI Engine under Incipient Knock Conditions

This paper investigates, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, the knock resistance improvements that can be obtained in a turbo-charged GDI engine with water injection. In a first step, water and gasoline injector models are validated comparing the results with experimental data from constant volume chamber tests. Then, multi-cycle simulations are performed using the G-equation turbulent combustion model focusing on spray evolution and wall film dynamics. The main intent is analyzing the effectiveness of different water injection timings and injection pressures in a port water injection (PWI) installation. Combustion rates are validated against experimental engine data, with and without water injection. Afterwards, in order to predict autoignition behavior with different spark advance (SA) timings, the extended coherent flamelet model (ECFM) combined with a tabulated kinetic ignition (TKI) dataset is used. End-gas autoignition delays are calculated using a reduced mechanism for toluene primary reference fuel (TPRF), which revealed essential for capturing actual gasoline ignition characteristics. Results indicate that the water atomization quality, i.e., injection pressure, is significant in a PWI installation allowing a reduction of the water wall film formation in the ports. Water injection timing needs also to be carefully chosen for optimized performance. As the injected water allows the SA to be increased, the overall benefits on indicated mean effective pressure and fuel consumption are quantified under the same knock safety margin, matching adequately well the available measurements.

Application of GNSS displacement monitoring system in measurement of open sea structure

With the development of deep water port and marine engineering, more and more marine structures are located in open sea area. The measurement development of open sea area structure is restricted by abominable marine environment, no control point and difficult data transmission. Combined with the deep water offshore bucket-based breakwater, the displacement measurement technology of open sea structure is studied. The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is built to realize real-time monitoring of bucket structure displacement. Different monitoring schemes are formulated based on the characteristics and precision of the structure in the sea conveyance floating stage, installation stage or operation stage. It is found that displacement in the structure along the axis of the breakwater is less than that perpendicular to the axis by monitoring data, and the displacement laws of horizontal displacement and settlement in each stage of the structure are obtained. It has very important guiding significance for the structure construction and post-construction stability control in open sea area.

Impact of fuel and engine operating conditions on efficiency of a heavy duty truck engine running compression ignition mode using energy and exergy analysis

Gasoline compression ignition using a single gasoline-type fuel for direct/port injection has been shown as a method to achieve low temperature combustion with low engine-out NOx and soot emissions and high indicated thermal efficiency. However, key technical barriers to achieving low temperature combustion on multi-cylinder engines include the air handling system (limited amount of exhaust gas recirculation) as well as mechanical engine limitations (e.g. peak pressure rise rate). In light of these limitations, high temperature combustion with reduced amounts of exhaust gas recirculation appears more practical. Previous studies by the authors demonstrated that utilizing port and direct injection of E85 gasoline simultaneously resulted in the best performance and the highest brake thermal efficiency of 47.1%, which was 1.2% higher compared to diesel baseline. For further efficiency improvement, a better understanding of energy and exergy loss mechanisms is required. In this work, first and second law thermodynamics analysis were applied to experiments with gasoline compression ignition at an engine speed of 1038 rpm and brake mean effective pressure of 1.4 MPa on a 12.4 L multi-cylinder heavy-duty diesel engine. The impact on the efficiency, losses, and irreversibility with respect to various parameters such as fuel, injection strategy, intake condition, and port injected water mass was quantified. The peak efficiency of ideal cycles and the combined efficiency with a waste heat recovery system were also estimated in this study to assess opportunities for further efficiency gains. It was found that the combustion irreversibility was dominated by the combustion temperature rather than the fuel structure. Despite its highest brake thermal efficiency, E85 gasoline generated the highest exergy destruction due to its lowest combustion temperature. For the same reason, retarding the combustion phasing or adopting a port and direct injection strategy increased the exergy destruction. The combustion duration loss was more notable than the phasing loss and was affected by both the combustion duration and shape of heat release profile. Water port injection increased the exhaust energy, but the available energy dropped significantly attributed to the decrease in the exhaust temperature, rendering waste heat recovery ineffective. The second law analysis serves as a helpful tool in conjunction with the first law analysis to explore pathways to maximize engine efficiency.

Observer-Based Nonlinear Robust Control of Floating Container Cranes Subject to Output Hysteresis

A container crane mounted on a pontoon is utilized to transfer containers to smaller ships when a large container ship cannot reach the shallow water port. The shipboard container is considered as an underactuated system having complicated kinematic constraints and hysteretic nonlinearities, with only two actuators to conduct simultaneous tasks: tracking the trolley to destination, lifting the container to the desired cable length, and suppressing the axial container oscillations and container swing. Parameter variations, wave-induced motions of the ship, wind disturbance, and nonlinearities remain challenges for control of floating container cranes. To deal with these problems, this study presents the design of two nonlinear robust controllers, taking into account the influence of the output hysteresis, and using velocity feedback from a state observer. Control performance of the proposed controllers is verified in both simulation and experiments. Together with consistently stabilizing outputs, the proposed control approach well rejects hysteresis and disturbance.

Addressing the effect of the Mo.S.E. barriers closure on wind setup within the Venice lagoon

A correct management of the mobile barriers that have presently been building at the three inlets of the Venice lagoon (Mo.S.E. project) is of paramount importance for the safeguard of the urban settlements located inside the lagoon. In this work, we compare, by means of a 2-D hydrodynamic model, the setup produced by intense winds during the period of closure of the mobile barriers to the pre-Mo.S.E. scenario, when the flow through the three inlets is not regulated.The analysis considers both some recent storm surge events and more systematically all the meteorological (i.e. wind speed, direction and duration) and hydrodynamic conditions (i.e. sea level and tidal amplitude).We demonstrate that the wind setup significantly increases when the gates at the three inlets are closed, up to exceeding four times the pre-Mo.S.E. scenario.This phenomenon will strongly affect the management of the Mo.S.E. barriers and their operating strategy when pursuing the goal of preventing the flooding at all the urban settlements of the lagoon. More precisely, it will impose to close the gates in advance with respect to what expected by considering only the safeguard of the city of Venice, which is not significantly affected by wind setup due to its central position within the lagoon.This would fatally increase the yearly period of closure of the lagoon, enhancing all the issues concerning long and repeated closures, such as, for example, lagoon water quality and port industry.

Excitation of seiches in ice at port water area of the sea of Okhotsk

Long term observations of sea waves with one second discreteness in the port harbor of Sea of Okhotsk (Sakhalin island) at a depth of about two meters under the ice were carried out using autonomous wave recorders in 2009-2017. Spectral analysis of the data showed the presence of several significant peaks on the periods from 2 to 15 seconds in the spectra for the moments of strong swell at sea. These peaks are caused by wave processes that are generated due to the nonlinear transformation of the swell coming in ice. The numerical simulation of the reaction of the dynamic system - the water area described by the Duffing equation, depending on the parameters included in the equation and determined from experimental observations, is carried out. It is shown, including using the Poincare mapping that the amplitude of external forcing has the greatest influence on the transition of the system to chaos.