But rising trade, new engine markets and designs, emissions regulations, fuel specifications, supply and demand, base oil types and additive technologies are rocking todays marine lubricant market. Can those serving the maritime industry avoid being stranded at sea?

Fleet Dreams

There has been strong growth in world seaborne trade, said Alex Cole, a marine product specialist at Chevron Oronite. [The expansion of] the world economy driven by China, India and Far East nations has prompted an increase in East-West trade.

As a result, [shipbuilding] order books are all way up, she told LubesnGreases.

Cole has spent 20 years in the lubricants industry, starting first with Castrol, then Afton Chemical Corp., and for the past six years with Chevron Oronite in London. In recent years, there has been a dramatic boom in the worldwide ship-building industry, evidenced by the current spike in orders for new container ships, tankers and bulk carriers. Currently, there are 1,229 container ships, 1,555 tankers and 1,024 bulk carriers on the order books. With shipyards fully booked for three to five years, there will be significant delivery of new-builds through 2010, she explained at the ICIS Middle East Base Oils Conference in Dubai this past fall.

Meanwhile, scrappage rates are extremely low, and few older ships are being retired. The end result will be a much larger global fleet by 2010 – and an even greater thirst for marine lubricants, particularly in the ports of the Asia Pacific region.

Building new ships also means building new engines. Since 1994, the marine segment has seen rapid growth in the manufacture of 2-stroke marine propulsion engines, according to Cole, and a steady climb for 4-stroke marine propulsion engines as well. With an increase in the number of larger engines built and installed, new lubrication systems need to deliver effective cylinder lubrication. Base number (BN), corrosive wear, adhesive wear and deposit control issues must also be addressed, even as engines use a lower lubricant dosage, she said.

Also, as engine designs trend towards higher power densities, the need becomes more urgent for marine lubricants that can function under higher thermal stress conditions.

In 2007, global demand for marine lubes reached an estimated 3 million metric tons, Cole said. This demand was met mostly by using products formulated with API Group I base stocks. However, despite growing demand for marine lubricants worldwide, Group I supply is not expanding. So as Group I supply becomes limited and does not keep pace, the maritime industry will have to look to Group II for marine lubricants.

Fresh Sea Air

Another issue affecting the maritime industry is stricter emissions legislation, which have led to new fuel specifications. In May 2005, the Marpol Annex VI, an international agreement under the United Nations for limiting air pollution by ships in international waters, mandated that the maximum sulfur content of a ships fuel be 4.5 percent.

The European parliament two months later took steps to amend its emissions standards, and enacted EU Directive 2005/33/EC, capping sulfur content on fuels used within Europe as well. One of its edicts set the maximum permitted sulfur content of marine fuels of seaborne vessels in the North Sea/English Channel at 1.5 percent, effective Nov. 8, 2007.

In January 2007, the California Air Resources Board put a maximum 0.5 percent sulfur content cap on marine engines on oceangoing vessels within regulated Californian waters.

For additive suppliers, investment in more research and development will be critical as additive technology will need to meet new engine performance requirements and recent emissions standards, and to cater to different fuel and base oil types. Additive suppliers will also have to ensure global security of supply for marine lube additives, Cole observed.

Maersks Mission

There are many market drivers that impact todays ship owner, says Keith Saddler, director of global sales and marketing at Maersk Fluid Technology Inc. (MFT-I), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group headquartered in Norfolk, Va. The decision by A.P. Moller to create MFT-I was, in many ways, in direct response to these drivers.

MFT-I focuses on the procurement of marine fuels and lubricants for the A.P. Moller fleet, including the Maersk Line international shipping transport company. It also drives the fleets adoption of new technologies to manage fuel and lubricant use.

Without doubt, the high cost of lubricants and fuels is a major issue to an industry that consumes large quantities of both, Saddler said. With crude prices continuing to flirt with the $100 a barrel mark, ship owners must look for ways to lower their net cost of operation.

The Wartsila RT-flex 96C that powers the Emma Maersk is a prime example. It can produce more than 80,000 kilowatts of operating power, and does it by burning 250,000 liters of fuel and 2,000 liters of cylinder lubricant each day. Combustion pressures can reach 160 bar, putting huge stresses on the engine and its lubricant.

MFT-I is also expanding Maersks use of newly developed technology. For example, one piece of equipment, the skid-mounted SEA-Mate blender, allows the cylinder oil to be formulated aboard the vessel by using oil directly from the 2-stroke engines sump and introducing a specialized additive enhancer. Once the two fluids are processed through the blender, the net result is a high-quality cylinder oil.

This process means that a vessel never has to buy commercial cylinder oil and will constantly be replenishing the sump oil with new fresh product, Saddler said. This process of replenishing the system oil results in improved protection of critical bearings, and elimination of crankcase deposits and undercrown piston deposits which impact thermal efficiency.

It also allows the operator to blend the cylinder oil to the exact BN needed, based on the fuel sulfur level, and thus comply with emissions regulations, he explained.

Lube supply is also a concern, Saddler said. After Hurricane Katrina, a large portion of the marine oil additive supply was out of commission. As a result, some customers were put on allocation, while others were forced to use a lower-BN cylinder oil even when burning high-sulfur fuel. [Our technology enables] the ship owner to have a much better opportunity to weather future supply disruptions, he said.

The Maersk Line has also done its part to control emissions by introducing a waste heat recovery system onboard the Edith Maersk. It is the 25th vessel in its fleet to feature the system. Waste heat recovery captures the energy contained in the main engines exhaust gas to provide useful power for propulsion as well as electricity needs. It reduces the environmental impact by decreasing the required main-engine power while maintaining the power available to the propeller. This means less fuel consumption and fewer exhaust emissions for the same shaft power. A 10 percent energy recovery typically can reduce all air emissions – CO2, NOx and SOx – and in practical terms, Maersk said, the CO2 emissions of each large container vessel are reduced by about 15,000 tons a year.

Wartsilas Work

At the Wartsila Global Research and Development unit in Vaasa, Finland, fuel specialist Kai Juoperi says that Emission regulations, and developing engines to fulfill existing and future emission limits are key issues in our R&D work.

Wartsila is following the limits specified in the ISO 8217 fuel specification, Juoperi said. Thus, another naturally important target in our R&D work is to develop engines so that those can cope with existing and specified fuel qualities in a way that specified engine component intervals and engine component lifetimes can be achieved.

Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, Wartsila is a marine diesel engine manufacturer whose maritime customers operate a range of ships, including container vessels, tankers, offshore rigs, cruise vessels, fishing boats, Navy vessels and harbor tugs. In most cases, these customers buy their lubricating oil directly from a lube oil supplier, Juoperi said. But in some cases the initial fill for new engines is Wartsilas responsibility.

What we [look for] technically is good performance, long lifetime, good support and technical assistance from the lube oil supplier, Juoperi said, and naturally the price has an influence as well.

However as far as I know, the market is quite competitive, meaning that price differences between different [marine lube] products are minimal. We are not facing any specific problems in big magnitude. But it is very important that lubricating oil keep engine components like piston ring grooves, rings and piston-cooling galleries free of excessive amounts of deposits which can lead to operating problems.

Juoperi also said that on heavy-fuel operation, it is also essential that lube oil base number is kept at an adequate level to avoid corrosion. Also good viscosity control, good water-shedding properties and long change intervals are important.

Engine builders are sharply aware of customer concerns about lubricant costs, and in 2006 Wartsila began offering the Pulse Lubricating System for retrofit on many of its models. This electronically controlled cylinder lubrication system promises to save costs by lowering oil consumption, without compromising reliability. It does this by more precisely feeding and distributing the cylinder oil to the cylinder liner – at rates as low as 0.8 grams of oil per kWh. With cylinder oil costing $1,700 per metric ton in December, this can save more than $200,000 a year for a 12-cylinder RTA 96C engine running for 7,000 hours, the company said. The first Pulse retrofit was performed on the Cosco Shenzhen container ship in fall 2006; the latest were ordered in November for installation on 21 container carriers operated by German shipowner Reederei Claus-Peter Offen.

Oronites Alex Cole said, however, that extremely low feed rates may backfire, leading to deposit buildup and wear in the piston areas. Although field experience still is being weighed, the data so far suggests that differences in lubricant performance become more critical – and visible – at lower feed rates.