The influence of ship operational profile in the sustainability of ship energy systems

In recent years, the environmental and economic sustainability of the shipping sector has gained great atten-tion due to the imposed environmental legislation and the uncertainty on fuel prices. The extant literature re-view acknowledges the importance of the operational profile in the improvement of ship systems energy effi-ciency. However, there has not been a complete study to identify and measure the impact of the operational profile on the environmental and economic performance of ship energy systems. In this paper, the influence of the ship operational profile on the sustainability performance of the main ship energy systems is investigated. Different operational profiles are implemented and the resulting economic and environmental impact of the main engine, the thermal boilers and the auxiliary engines of an Aframax tanker ship are analysed over the ship’s operational life cycle. Varying the speed distribution affects both the transportation time for a specific voyage as well as the number of voyages per year. Considering these parameters a complete estimation of the emissions emitted, the fuel consumption, the operational costs and the profits from the cargo transportation are estimated for each profile. The results show that even with small shifts in the speed distribution the differ-ences on the sustainability indicators are significant. Therefore, the operational profile needs to be considered in the early design phases when the synthesis of the energy systems takes place, in order to achieve significant improvement on the systems environmental and economic sustainability performance