Ship Maintenance Goes High Tech
Machine reliability is a top priority and continuing challenge in marine applications, which operate in harsh conditions and at remote locations far from port and repair facilities. Ship operators can help keep machinery running efficiently by equipping their maintenance departments and crews with a full complement of new-generation maintenance tools. These tools, which range from high-accuracy alignment systems to precise automatic lubricators, can help avert premature failures and reduce the need for repairs at sea.
WSS Offers Free Welding Safety Inspections
Wilhelmsen Ships Service (WSS) is currently running a campaign to promote safe onboard welding across the Asia Pacific region. The Welding Safety Inspection Service, launched earlier this year in Singapore, deals head-on with the challenges faced by vessel owners and operators in maintaining welding equipment onboard and ensuring operational practices are up to date with regulations. At this time, the inspection service is offered free of charge to existing customers. Paul Rogersā¦
DEME Group Belgium Uses Wilhelmsen Ships Service
Belgian company DEME Group, which operates a fleet of over 80 dredging vessels, another 200 auxiliary vessels and specialized equipment, has appointed Wilhelmsen Ships Services as specialized supplier for maintenance products and technical gases globally. Wilhelmsen Ships Service has started the contract work attending to the gradual changeover of gases. The company is converting larger vessels first and then will move onto other units, barges and land based workshops. In addition to supplying gas to vessels, Wilhelmsen Ships Service hosted a training session in Antwerp on cylinder safety and handling, covering the topics DEME had highlighted as most important for their people and business as well as introducing DEME to the stock range and the practical setup.
Nalfleet Marine Tests Kittiwake's Equipment
Nalfleet Marine Chemicals, the marine division of specialty water treatment company, Ondeo Nalco, has selected Kittiwake developments for its test kits and equipment. Nalfleet, which supplies on-board water treatment chemicals, maintenance products, automation systems and associated services to the worldwide shipping industry, also provides a comprehensive range of test kits, replacement reagents and analytical equipment for this purpose. Other improvements included a complete revision of test kit instructions to a more user friendly and durable format and offering to consolidate all Nalfleet's deliveries for export, an activity that they previously had to do in-house, whilst still achieving a substantial saving over the existing arrangement.
Coal Transhipment Terminal Finds New Cure for Old Conveyor Spillage Problems
Neary four million tons of coal passed in and out of Scotland's Hunterston Terminal in 1997, drawn in large part by a reputation for fast turnaround that has made this one of the biggest seaport bulk transhipment facilities in Western Europe. But, building that reputation wasn't easy. Moving coal at 2,000 to 3,000 tons per hour (tph), through some five miles of conveyors linked by multiple transfer points, the terminal had long been plagued by spillage problems that laid a costly burden on the maintenance staff and threatened penalty charges from delays in ship loading/unloading. The search for a more reliable way to keep the coal on the belts finally ended when maintenance management found a new system for keeping skirt rubber in place at the transfers and more easily adjusted.
