PAGE 8 DIESELFACTS 1/2009 The taxi-driver’s curses are unprint- able, but it’s fair to say he is extreme- ly dissatisfied with the state of the afternoon traffic. In a scenario that could have been conjured up by Danté, a confusion of roadworks combines with rush- hour mayhem to reduce progress to a crawl for all except for the mul- titude of mopeds zipping in and out of the near-stationary queue. Our destination is Skaraman- gas, an industrial centre on the western outskirts of Athens. It’s home to Hellenic Shipyards, one of the Mediterranean’s largest and whose business is based on the decent climate and extensive fa- cilities that include two large dry- docks, the larger of which currently contains the ‘Seascout’. The Seascout is operated by Th- enamaris, a leading, independent, ship-management company. A double-hulled, Aframax, 110,000- dwt, crude-oil tanker, it was built in Korea in 2004 and is here for a general overhaul. DieselFacts has travelled from Copenhagen to watch PrimeServ, MAN Diesel’s af- ter-sales division, retrofit an Alpha Lubricator to the Seascout’s MAN B&W 6S60MC main engine. The Alpha Lubricator The Alpha Lubricator System is based on the principle of injecting a specific volume of oil into a cyl- inder liner after a certain, pre-set number of engine revolutions. This can be adjusted as required for each individual cylinder unit, and a computer automatically adjusts the feed-rate according to the en- gine’s power output. Accordingly, the Alpha Lubricator displays very low feed-rates with commensu- rate, large savings of lubricating oil. The technology existed back in 2004 but was still establishing its reputation, which is why the Sea- scout has waited until now to reap its benefit. PrimeServ has sent two Danish engineers to Greece to carry out the job. Superintendent Engineer Steen Møller Hansen is 40 years of age and an 11-year PrimeServ veteran. Educated as a marine en- gineer, he sailed for several years before joining MAN Diesel and has completed Alpha Lubricator jobs recently in both Portugal and Spain. He says that “every ship is different and there are always new challenges.” On this job, Møller Hansen is ac- companied by 27-year-old trainee Kasper Munk Jacobsen, another marine engineer who worked for a district-heating plant before joining PrimeServ in February 2008. As part of his training, he has already spent a month in PrimeServ’s spare-parts department, an ex- perience he says was: “invaluable for getting to know the company,” such is that department’s central role and contact with staff from all over MAN Diesel’s global network. He has already travelled to Singa- pore and Dubai where PrimeServ recently opened a new spare-parts warehouse and service centre, re- spectively. The third man The two engineers are enjoying a well-deserved coffee and some good-natured banter when Die- selFacts shows up with another colleague. The third man is Jan Jensen (41), a Project Engineer from Copenhagen with significant Alpha Lubricator installation ex- perience. Jensen got his sea legs early as a 16-year-old cabin boy, later studying to become a marine engineer. He subsequently worked for a bio-mass development com- pany before joining PrimeServ five years ago. He’s aboard the Sea- scout today to have a look at how the job is going and to speak to Petros Katsavis, the Thenamaris Superintendent Engineer. Katsavis is the driving force behind his com- pany’s investment in the Alpha Lu- bricator and any retrofitted to the Thenamaris fleet come under his remit. Jensen thinks the creation of such a role is “genius because it means that all the knowledge gained from one installation isn’t just lost when the next such job comes along.” Katsavis has done his home- work. If the Alpha Lubricator is as effective as he believes (and its ret- rofitting to over 500 ships strongly suggests he is right), then his com- pany stands to slash its ship’s lu- bricating-oil consumption. In fact, his figures are very conservative compared to PrimeServ’s in terms of how quickly the new equipment can pay for itself. In that respect, the Seascout installation is a sort of test-run with the possibility of the experiment being extended to the rest of the Thenamaris fleet, a development Jensen would be very happy to see. MAN Diesel has also supplied the Seascout’s three Hyundai- built 6L23/30 auxiliary engines. This leads to a discussion in the engine-control room later where Steen Møller Hansen assures DieselFacts that the background noise they make “is nothing com- pared to the racket when the main engine and turbocharger are going and, worst of all, when the tanker’s oil pumps are going!” Jacobsen adds that when the noise is at its worst, that they sometimes have to resort to sign language to get a point across, and that it can take a couple of days to get used to the quiet when returning home after such a job. The installation The PrimeServ team has already been aboard a week, during which time they have: checked all Alpha Lubricator components and that the pre- installation is OK set up most of the system hardware examined the system wiring flushed the system pipes to filter out impurities gone through the system software and begun its final configuration Right now, they’re trying to solve a problem with an angle encoder, which tells the Alpha Lub. exactly when to inject oil, and hold one of many little chats to discuss solu- tions. When Møller Hansen clam- bers to the bottom of the engine to work on the device, Petros Kat- savis takes multiple pictures and writes copious notes. In this way, he logs every step of the job for his company where progress of the Alpha Lubricator installation is keenly followed. In the meantime, Jacobsen is on the other side of the engine, fine- tuning a pick-up which is used as a back-up for the angle encoder. Both devices send signals to the Alpha Lubrictor Control Unit (ALCU) where proprietary software controls the lubricating system and its settings. Around 19:00, the ship’s agent shows up to drive us to our hotel, about 20 minutes to the south. In the gloom, we flash by apartment blocks, small factories and the oc- casional road-side bar before the growing number of berthed fer- ries tells us that Piraeus is close at hand. Athen’s port for much of its history, Piraeus serves a massive 19 million passengers a year, many bound for the expansive Greek ar- PrimeServ Fits Seascout Out Under Greek Sun DieselFacts pulls on its boilersuit for an Alpha Lubricator retrofit Steen Møller Hansen at work. Despite appearences, the blue “baseball cap” is actually a hardhat provided by Thenamaris The Seascout in dry dock. Its hull also received a new coat of paint during DieselFact’s visit Cover story