I can stand by that statement; “as long as the propulsion function as normal”.
I don’t know if you can blame the engineers for believing that low level alarm was set to allow for the ship to roll and/or pitch as it is expected to do in a Force 9-10 storm.
The heavy rolls seen in the video posted earlier happened AFTER they lost power, not while they were moving along normally.
PS> I raised those question in anticipation of what would be coming on various media and forums, not necessarily because I would ask those questions.
The Egbert Wagenborg just left Aalesund bound for Delfzijl.
Hopefully with the hole in the side at least temporary repaired. (She did not go to any shipyard)
An important difference is that the lack of oil on the El Faro was caused by a permanent list.
As a layman I am a bit baffled by the outcome of the investigation, a sort of anti-climax. Were all four engines dipping in one pool of lube oil? One would expect that each engine had its own oil tank. And with a rolling ship there should be some oil intake. How is it possible that all four engines did stop simultaneously? Why did it take so long before some of the engines were restarted seen the rather simple cause? I can see the signal in the control room flashing: Low Oil Pressure’.
Right now looking at it there are two factors that caused this. The LO level and the weather. Eliminate one and this doesn’t happen. The error chain is broken.
Given that the LO level was within “normal” parameters. It points to the weather as the cause. The ship was not able to operate without incident in that weather.
Not relevant to the shutdown. we’re discussing the sequence leading up to the shutdown. Heavy rolling always makes working more difficult though.
Blackout recovery with electric driven LO pumps vs engine driven LO pumps. Were the pumps on the E-bus, and were any pumps damaged from dry running. Plus the time to fill the sump/sumps.
The way it is starting to develop it would seem that people forgot they were designing a ship not a power station and I am puzzled by the fact that all generating machinery was on load. On a DP2 vessel with one father and two sons in each engine room I can only recall one occasion when we had all engines online. As Dutchie points out there must of been some kind of indication of low oil pressure . Unfortunately as ships get more complicated it is no longer safe to allow knowledge to be passed on by a handover and understudy period and senior officers both engineering and electrical should attend courses by the manufacturer before posting to the vessel for a handover period.
I stand corrected regarding my previous messages where I suspected a blackout due to electrical problems. I would have not expected this to be the cause of the incident.
All four DG’s shutting on low lub. oil pressure at the same time…hmmmm. If this was due to low level and ship movement it could only happen during a roll. Since the engines are facing each other and the suction line is on the freeend side, a heavy pitch should only take out 2 engines. I would be looking at a design flaw from MAN regarding min level calculation or the ship yard not following the MAN guidelines regarding lub. oil system tank design or wrong calibration of level alarm/monitoring.
I was hove to in heavy seas and lost the main engine on a low lube oil pressure. No black-out. It seemed longer but the eng dept added lube oil and has us running again in about 10 minutes or so while we drifted in beam seas.
Apparently in this case the problem couldn’t be corrected as quickly for some reason(s).
I’ve suggested elsewhere that restarting medium speed diesel generators without the benefit of auxiliary generators to supply power to essential engine pumps must involve a large emergency generator. Someone else then picked up on the possibility that ship’s staff had probably never had to restart from blackout conditions. This could possibly explain the time taken from blackout to restarting an engine and restoring electrical power and some propulsion.
The Emergency generator(s) started shortly after blackout according to pax and onlookers interviewed by local media.
Whether the power was sufficient to supply only hotel load, or also essential equipment is not known, but from what I know that is first requirement, while hotel is limited to lighting etc.
This ship is manned by Scandinavian Officers and Engineers with years of experience from modern ships, incl. ships with diesel/electric propulsion.
As a chief engineer of a diesel electric plant I’m baffled too. A normal practice would be an analog point with a “warning” set point and an “alarm” set point then actual shutdown by a separate pressure switch. A low sump level alarm would also be normal and come before loss of pump suction. Repeated alarms and on more than one engine has to send people scurrying to check and add oil and look for where it went.
Could be that simple, wrongly built. Or more to the story of what is considered “in range”. Who established range and based on what. The brochures do not make it look like a dry crankcase with reservoir tank below. Having a pump pick up air in a wet sump under normal stormy weather seems just plain wrong.
On the other hand, start shutting down engines under appreciable load until blacked out and see how easy it is to restart the plant. Especially not having cured the underlying problem. Are we sure they have off engine electric pumps? The brochures make it look like engine driven. If the purging the air time exceeded the low oil pressure test time they could have been struggling to get it running for a while and keeping the start air up for those trials even after they got oil in the sump.
As simple as the failure sounds could have been a real shit show. Looking forward to more details.
It seems obvious that ships and engine systems need to be designed and built so that there will always be good lube oil suction from the sump or lube tank right up to the point where ship rolls over.
Wet sump on the 2 - 9L32/44CR’s – 5,250 liters of lubrication oil equals 1386.903 US gallons based on the filling volumes chart specs. No reports of excess oil found in the bilge.
!!! I understand there are 4 Engines/Gensets in the engineering space of the vessel. Not just 2. !!!
After the turn of the century, I had a similar problem with oil pressure shut downs with Cat 3612s. On the east coast and gulf, the ATBs had no problem but on the west coast, with the long swells, the port ME ECM would drop the intake damper from a slight LOP drop. The MMS system would not alarm before the shutdown. The LO sump suctions were lowered a few inches and it cured the problem. The subsequent ATBs with C280s were modified the same with no further failures.
There must be electric pumps somewhere. Otherwise how do you supply lube oil etc in the case of dead ship? You don’t start one of those engines without lube oil pressure on the crankshaft!
You could in an emergency (like drifting dead in the water 100m from the rocky Norwegian coast). Jump out the pressure sensor now, inspect the bearings later.
I think I would disable the T/C jet assist if I were doing a startup without pre lube though.
Yep it could/should have a small pre-lube pump if they consider it in Standby service. That might not be enough flow to affect where the low oil pressure switch is though. I would love to see more details of the plant released. Maybe the final report will have some diagrams.
Definitely some design changes to consider…the simultaneous (or nearly so) loss of the whole plant gives me the willies just thinking about it. Regardless, if I have learned one thing over time it is (try) and stay off the s/p phone or radio and let the engineers fix the problem. That is not to say the hair wasn’t shading gray every minute while waiting for information but “Give me an update when you can” seems to help expediate the repair.
