The Crazy Amount of Power Needed to Move World Largest Container Ships
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Welcome back to the our channel for details on the crazy engineering behind the massive engines powering modern container ships today. The extreme scale of these ship builds is beyond amazing , to think what tiny little men can build is just insane crazy and yet we still treat each other like dirt. As a person that has a beach house right next to the port we see ginormous Titans entering the port each hour each second each millisecond, it’s insane to see these giants floating on a giant body of water! truly a masterpiece made by mankind. The largest combustion engines ever built can be found in container ships. However, the engines in the new ultra large container ships tend to be smaller in size and power but instead on one main engine, they have two main engines and two propellers. All the main engines in large container ships and tankers are two-stroke engines. In ones has to be pedantic about the clip, it is not mere the turbochargers ability to compress the combustion air for the engine that increases the efficiency of the engine. It is also the fact that the turbocharger is driven by the exhaust gas. The part in the video where pistons are mentioned, the shown is not a piston but a crosshead. Since this type engine is very tall (long piston stroke), a device is needed between the piston rod and the crankshaft to covert the rotating motion of the crankshaft to a vertical movement of the piston. This is the job of the crosshead. On top of the crosshead, the piston rod is mounted. In principle all two stroke main engine may be considered low speed engines since they typically operates at a max rpm of 85 - 160 rpm depending on the size of the engine. HFO and Diesel are not the same thing. HFO, which stands for Heavy Fuel Oil, is a residual fuel that has basically been discontinued since the introduction of the IMO 2020 regulations. Diesel is mainly a distillate type fuel and is today used it two different quality ranges in shipping where both have a very low Sulphur content compared to earlier. The general speed of container ships have dropped a bit since the introduction of the ultra large container ships. Up to the last large container ships with only one massive main engine, a top speed at around 26-28 knots was not unusual. The ultra large container ships, mostly with two main engines typically has a speed between 19 - 24 knots. At all time, the sailing of maritime ships is all about fuel efficiency and optimization. You never ever sail at 100 load on the main engine unless absolutely necessary. The extra speed you achieve between 85% engine load and 100% engine load is typically pretty small while the extra consumption in fuel is very high.
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