CIMAC WG 7 Fuels | ISO 8217:2024 - Design and operation of fuel cleaning systems for diesel engines

The safe handling of fuels on board ship requires four key component elements to align to ensure the fuel as delivered is safely and efficiently stored, cleaned, and conditioned prior to its intended use. These elements include:

1. The correct selection of the ISO 8217 fuel grade to meet the specific ship’s machinery plant and fuel system design, technical and operational requirements.

2. A fuel system designed for flexibility to cope with the global diversity of fuel blends being supplied as expected for the operational profile of the specific ship.

3. Information on the properties of each fuel at point of supply made available to enable effective fuel management.

4. Engineers well trained on the most recent best practices in applying effective fuel management.

Most ships operating today have fuel system designs common to both two-stroke and four-stroke engines meeting the minimum requirements, which are still suitable for the fuels in use. The systems, however, may not necessarily offer the degree of flexibility required to handle efficiently the more widely diverse range of fuel blends being supplied since the introduction of VLSFO (Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil) grades from January 2020. Experience in the use of VLSFO since the start of 2020, has highlighted the importance of much more compositional awareness of the fuel properties as supplied and a greater flexibility in system design to manage the more complex storage requirements for segregation, pre-treatment/cleaning and thermal management. The guideline will also address the quality of distillate fuels.

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