Special Software News

For 50 years Gielle has provided onboard firefighting systems and now presents its new installation on the base of Novec1230 fluid firefighting system for extinguishing fires in engine rooms, pump rooms, transformer rooms and electrical rooms, for ship and offshore applications. The new Gielle firefighting system can replace, without significant modifications, old systems using Halon, Halotron IIB, carbon dioxide and water mist on board ships. The firefighting system designed by Gielle has passed the approval tests and today holds certifications and approvals from ABS…

There’s hardly anything that can’t be shipped in a container. However, for ethical reasons, Hapag-Lloyd refuses to transport certain goods. Anyone who regularly transports goods for third parties, as a shipping company does, could theoretically just sit back and let the customers shoulder all the responsibility for whatever crosses the oceans in containers – as long as no laws are broken. But having not been content with doing business that way for many years, Hapag-Lloyd has compiled a list of the goods that it won’t transport for ethical reasons.

Privately held, American-based On-Site Analysis, Inc. (OSA), a manufacturer of high-tech, on-premise, automated fluids analysis equipment, has now expanded into the maritime industry with the introduction of the OBA ShipCheck, an on-board analyzer. With a physical footprint of just four square feet and weighing only 95 pounds, and using the same ASTM methods as outside labs, the OBA ShipCheck conducts diagnostic fluids analysis for marine engine lubricants, marine grease and gear lubricants, generators, hydraulics, air compressors, scrape down oils and many more fluids.

U.K. signalling manufacturer E2S Warning Signals has designed and developed a bespoke siren system to alert people nearby when an RNLI lifeboat is launching. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is the charity that saves lives at sea. It has 236 lifeboat stations around the coasts of the U.K. and Ireland. Its lifeboats are crewed by specially trained volunteers, who carry pagers. When the pager goes off, alerting them to an emergency at sea, they drop everything and rush to the station to launch the lifeboat.

The shipping software and service provider Interschalt maritime systems AG has chosen MTN Communications (MTN) to deliver VSAT communications services enabling special software solutions and services to its customers. MTN will provide the global satellite and network infrastructure through which Interschalt will provide customer-specific solutions focusing on efficiency and safety in fleet management and vessel monitoring. Global communications delivered to vessels located around the world will be made possible through MTN's global C- and Ku-band network - providing seamless coverage.

Classification society Bureau Veritas has introduced a new set of requirements for shaft alignment on high powered ships. The ESA notation will help ensure the integrity of the structure and shaft bearings on very large vessels such as ultra-large container ships and the next generation of very large LNG carriers. Jean-Francois Segretain, deputy technical director, Bureau Veritas, said, “As ships grow in size and we seek more fuel economies we are now seeing vessels with shafts handling over 20MW of power driving large diameter propellers of over 30 tons weight. Critical attention has to be paid at the design stage to analyzing the elastic shaft alignment and ensuring that the bearings and structure match the shaft response, especially when the vessel is turning.

The OMEGA iTHX-SD transmitter lets you monitor and record Temperature, Relative Humidity and Dew Point over an Ethernet network or the Internet with no special software except a Web browser.  It serves Active Web Pages to display real time readings, display charts of temperature and humidity  or log data in standard data formats for use in a spreadsheet or data acquisition program such as Excel or Visual Basic. www.omega.com

INTERSCHALT maritime systems AG presents its new fuel saving TROP trim optimization software. The maritime-shipping industry has also been forced to contend with the key issues of energy efficiency and sustainability. Optimizing the trim of a ship is a good way to achieve lasting reductions in fuel consumption. In fact, trim optimization has been an object of investigation since the 1990s. Back then, forward-thinking German shipowners were using models in towing tests designed to determine the trim that produced the lowest resistance as a ship moved through water.

Offshore vessels in the Gulf of Mexico have become more energy efficient in recent years and are polluting less because of changes in engines, bunker fuels and building materials. At the same time, Gulf of Mexico builders have responded to meet new regulations, customer needs. At Harvey Gulf International Marine in New Orleans, Environmental Compliance Coordinator Nicole Eddlemon said “adoption of energy-saving vessels in the U.S. is driven by North American Emission Control Area or ECA regulations, initiated by the Obama Administration and the U.S.

Comsat Mobile Communications(CMC), a unit of Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, has teamed with the United States Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to offer free Amver/SEAS (formerly Automated Mutual-assistance VEssel Rescue / Shipboard Environmental-data Acquisition Systems) messaging to mariners that use COMSAT-C satellite messaging service. CMC recently distributed more than 2,000 free packages of Amver/SEAS software to vessels and maritime shipping companies. This software combines Amver capabilities with NOAA volunteer observing ships weather reporting. The software, which uses a message format developed by COMSAT, enables ships to send compressed data via Inmarsat-C terminals using COMSAT-C service.

Lloyd and the yards, engine manufacturers and suppliers. Germanischer Lloyd. even in the preproduction phase. added savings in time. up to date immediately. the PDF format between the yard or manufacturer and Germanischer Lloyd. portal can be reached via a standard web browser. of the digital interchange procedure is safeguarded by the SSL method. Access is protected by password. creates a constantly changing password. charge.