Yearly Archives: 2024

Trapped Vessels Start to Move Out of Baltimore Following Bridge Disaster

The U.S. state of Maryland has opened a temporary channel on the northbound side of the collapsed Baltimore bridge, allowing limited tug and barge traffic around the container ship stuck at the disaster site, Governor Wes Moore said on Monday. "It will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse," Moore told a news conference. The Port of Baltimore's shipping channel has been blocked since a fully loaded container ship lost power and collided with a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge last Tuesday, killing six road workers and causing the highway bridge which loops around Baltimore to fall into the Patapsco River. The temporary channel opened on Monday has a controlling depth of 11 feet (3.35 meters), freeing some commercial tugs and barges that had been trapped in the harbor, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Shannon Gilreath told the news conference. Gilreath said he did not know if those vessels carried goods or were empty and seeking to reload elsewhere. The port is the largest in the U.S. for "roll-on, roll-off" vehicle imports and exports of farm and…

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IMO Moves Forward (Slowly) With Framework for Net-Zero Fuels and Fees

The eighty-first session of the Maritime Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization concluded on Friday after a week of meetings in London with what at best was being called a “step forward” or “progress toward the goals” for reducing shipping’s carbon emissions. While the meeting was not for the adoption of the regulations, many are still saying the progress is slow and highlights that much still needs to be done between now and the next MEPC meeting in the fall which calls for steps adopting the initiatives outlined in 2023. Member States met this week to debate and raise concerns about the key elements of the MEPC strategy adopted in July 2023. The IMO hailed last year’s efforts highlighting broad agreement for the climate roadmap that calls for reaching net-zero emissions "by or around, i.e. close to, 2050." The specific targets in the agreement include a 20 percent cut in emissions by 2030 and a much deeper 70 percent cut by 2040 (relative to 2008 levels). In the nine months since then, the IMO has been working on a framework for the key elements while…

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Study: Existing Fire-Fighting Rules Need Overhaul for Methanol-Fueled Ships

While interest in methanol-fueled ships is growing rapidly as a means of addressing emissions, a new fire safety study reports that existing fire-fighting methods and regulations are not ready for methanol ships.  According to Survitec which conducted extensive comparative fire tests on dual-fuel marine engines using diesel oil (DO) and methanol, existing fire-fighting methods used to extinguish machinery space spray and pool fires on conventionally fueled vessels are inadequate when dealing with methanol-based fires. “Our tests confirm that traditional water mist fire suppression mechanisms do not perform as expected on methanol pool fires and methanol spray fires,” said Michal Sadzynski, Product Manager, Water Mist Systems, Survitec. “Methanol fires are far more aggressive than fires involving traditional hydrocarbon fuels. Methanol fires have different physicochemical properties and so they cannot be extinguished as easily or with the same approach.” Methanol is a methyl alcohol (CH3OH) that burns in a completely different way than hydrocarbon fuels and has a much lower flashpoint of 12°C (54°F), according to Survitec. They report their testing found that while water mist systems are highly effective in absorbing heat and displacing oxygen on diesel fires, they…

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