/travel/freighter/Belly of the Beast
Since an hour or two before I woke up to in Liverpool to watch was we left bridge, there has been a steady, slow rumble. It's quieter, and lower frequency than the background noise on an airplane. Down in the base of the ship is a fearsome engine. It has sixteen cylinders, each perhaps 16 feet tall.
She burns 65 to 70 metric tonnes of fuel oil per day. The fuel has to be heated to about 100degC before it is sufficiently liquid to go into the engine. Unfortunately, between the accent and the noise, I didn't catch many of the explanations of the Chief Engineer about what various bits were.
This ship has about 2200 containers on it, and (IIRC, ICBW) 24000 tonnes of cargo. The total journey (Montreal to Antwerp to Liverpool to Montreal) is about 5000 nautical miles, or about 9000 kilometers, and they use 900 tonnes of fuel. So we have one tonne of fuel for every 10 kilometers. Which gives 22,000 container-kilometers, or 240,000 tonne-kilometers per tonne of fuel. Or 240 tonne-kilometers per kilogram of fuel. If you prefer.
I asked the Captain about whether there was pressure to save fuel, since he had mentioned that if the ship is even a little off-keel, the fuel usage goes way up. "No, not at all, it is always about speed," was the jist of his reply. Full tilt. The engine is running at 19.5 knots, but the roundtrip average is a little higher than that. He said even a small slow-down got big fuel gains. I'm hoping I can see the curve of fuel usage/km at various speeds, but not sure yet.
The whole engine thing is story told better by pictures.
