A study of the costs and benefit of technologies for LNG-fueled ships

LNG has become a future trend for marine fuel. However, it demands a high initial investment due to the high complexity and large range of technologies involved. Currently, there are several technologies available for LNG-fuelled ships. As such, a comparative model is presented to compare the costs of fuels and assess against the application for different available technologies, for examples, Scrubbers, waste and recovery, LNG system and LNG plus waste heat recovery. This study presents the current LNG market as well as its future potential. As the control of emissions has become a concern, ships are not allowed to pollute out of the limit of permission. Certain technologies have to be applied in order to achieve this. As mentioned above, there are generally two ways to satisfy emission control. One option is to use ‘clean fuel ’, which means the products of fuel are clean---less SOx and NOx. The other way is to use normal fuel but clean the exhaust before being discharged. LNG is one of the ‘clean fuel’ while ‘scrubber’ is the technology used in the second option. WHR is just a technology to enhance the efficiency of exhaust gas usage, which means the way to save power thus less fuel is required to be burned. WHR is able to be applied together with LNG or scrubber technology. Definitely, the cost varies for applying different technologies in order to clean the emission. In this study, the cost is also compared and payback time is computed. Ship owners or investors can see clearly LNG offers strong cost advantage, which explains the reason why it is worth being invested. Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering