Products & services

OZ develops platform aimed at helping to prevent, detect and contain coronavirus aboard cruise ships

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Written by Teijo Niemelä Teijo Niemelä

Category: Products & services Products & services

Published: 17 March 2020 17 March 2020

OZ, a global innovation and disruptive digital technologies consulting company announces Salus, a new mobile solution that will help cruise lines and state and local Florida health authorities tackle novel coronavirus, COVID-19. Each day, over 50,000 guests and crew descend to South Florida from all over the US and the new Salus solution will help prevent guests and crew suspected of having COVID-19 from boarding ships, help detect guests and crew that may have come down with COVID-19 while onboard the ship, and then help facilitate and track containment of these guests and crew, along with cataloguing onboard testing and treatment.

As cruise lines implement digital technology such as infrared cameras, thermometers and smart watches to detect COVID-19 symptoms in guests and crews, Salus collects and integrates this data with the ship’s passenger manifest system (PMS), IoT sensors, ship containment facilities, and diagnostics, all via a mobile crew application. This provides a full picture of guest and crew health throughout the cruise journey. If symptoms of COVID-19 are detected onboard via digital thermometers readings and infrared cameras, Salus will analyze prior person interactions, co-ordinate patient quarantine, treatment and testing, and capture patient hour-by-hour containment, diagnostic and treatment details. The Salus app will then provide full patient case details to the South Florida local health authorities of Miami-Dade and Broward Counties when docking back at port. Salus also helps prevent anyone suspected of being ill from boarding the ship in the first place, through integration with digital thermometers and infrared cameras that analyze guest and crew temperatures and stop anyone boarding with a body temperature above 100.4 oF Those cases are then immediately transmitted to the local health authority so people showing symptoms are quickly contained and receive treatment.

Ric Cavieres, President of OZ, comments, “OZ already develops multiple cruise line mobile applications, that integrate guest, crew and ship data and IoT devices, for several South Florida-based cruise line clients. This gives us a deep understanding of the cruise line processes, guests, employees, and platforms.” Cavieres adds, “OZ also has vast experience working with the state and local South Florida health authorities, which means we understand their protocols, processes and platforms. This combined experience means that we are ideally positioned to work with both the cruise lines and local health authority to help combat the effects of the coronavirus on the Florida travel industry. Additionally, our proximity to the ports allows us to quickly mobilize Salus.”

Cavieres concludes “We are deeply invested in our local community, and the Salus solution is our small part to try and help protect the people and businesses located here.”

OZ is currently in discussions with South Florida based cruise lines to adopt and implement Salus.

Roxtec launches new cost and time-saving innovative seal for shipyard industry

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Written by Kari Reinikainen Kari Reinikainen

Category: Products & services Products & services

Published: 16 March 2020 16 March 2020

International manufacturer Roxtec designs and manufactures pipe and cable safety seals for a range of industries including maritime and shipping. One new product Roxtec has developed, following feedback from the shipbuilding industry, is its SPM seal. Here Roxtec UK’s marine and offshore director John Kayes discusses how the Roxtec SPM seal is already dramatically speeding up installation time and slashing costs in shipyards, while also ensuring the safety of ships and crew. 

The big challenge when running pipes or cables through a fireproof or watertight bulkhead is to make a secure seal. Traditionally, the only fool-proof way was to insert the pipe into a tight-fitting and then weld it to the bulkhead itself. This proved a time-consuming operation with all the risks of high-temperature welding in a confined environment. The process was equally difficult to reverse should the pipe need replacing. After receiving a lot of feedback from its customers, Roxtec has developed a much quicker and easier solution which has not only dramatically reduced installation times, but also enhanced the safety of the through-bulkhead seal.

The product is the Roxtec SPM seal and is a remarkably simple device that holds the pipe in place by use of a metal and rubber sandwich. No welding is required. A gasket of EPDM (Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer) rubber is held between two flanges of marine grade 316 stainless steel. The seal is slid over the end of the pipe, then the pipe is pushed into an oversized aperture on the bulkhead. The SPM seal slides forward to fill the aperture, and then a series of bolts are tightened to distort the gasket to form an interference fit. Full tightness is indicated when the blue-coloured rubber is squeezed through a set of inspection holes.

The comparatively low cost and simplicity of the Roxtec SPM seal is making the product very successful. For example, a recent notable order was for the £200m polar research ship RRS Sir David Attenborough, where specialist safety seals were installed in key areas including the engine room, power generators and external lighting. Here they will provide protection from multiple hazards. Meanwhile, Roxtec continues to push forward with an extensive range of new products and practices to help to speed up the installation of pipes and cables.

“We are very responsive to customer feedback,” said John Kayes, Marine and Offshore Director for Roxtec UK. “The SPM seal, for example, came about as a request from a major Italian shipbuilder. They had originally been using an earlier type of seal but they asked if the fitting process could be accelerated even further. This led our Swedish-based R&D team to look more closely at the design of the single pipe seal solution and develop the SPM version.”

Mr Kayes said the new seal is proving ideal, as it slashes costly man-hours, especially during scheduled maintenance stops where time is money.

“A key innovation of the SPM seal is how it removes the need for welding,” he said. “All you need to do is cut a circular hole in the bulkhead to a prescribed diameter, clean it up, remove and sharp edges and you are good to go. The opening can even be slightly irregular as there is sufficient flex in the gasket. This greatly simplifies installation, maintenance work and even repairs at sea. As an example, by switching from traditional techniques to the SPM seal, engineers at a Brazilian shipyard recently cut installation time by a remarkable 88 per cent, slashing installation costs by a half.”

Mr Kayes describes another project, in which an A-60 fire bulkhead required more than 100 penetrations with a high degree of complexity. A job that had been assessed as requiring five people, including a painter, a total of 100 hours using welding techniques was reduced to just two people and 12 hours using SPM seals.

Looking ahead

Mr Kayes said Roxtec’s approach is rooted in innovation and one key area is the fire-resistance of its products. He said Roxtec recently completed work on a brand-new fire test facility at its headquarters in Karlskrona, Sweden.

“The new lab allows a test object such as part of a bulkhead to be built and then put through a series of realistic scenarios,” he said. “The data is captured by advanced diagnostics. As a bonus, visitors and classification societies can be invited to witness the tests from an observation room.”

Another key innovation is the new Roxtec Transit Registry, a digital resource that logs all the onboard pipe and cable penetrations to allow the customer to keep track of them.

“The registry is an innovation we offer as part of our package of safety services,” he said. “It enables systemised control of the quality of all transit installations, from initial installations to the latest upgrades and additions. You can see an overview and precise locations of all the pipe and electrical penetrations on board and find all the documents and logged activities for each one. Everything you need is in one easily accessed system.”

Roxtec’s products are found widely in the commercial and naval sector vessels worldwide (see: Roxtec naval). Its cable and pipe seals are used to protect ships and people from multiple hazards including fire, flooding, the risk of explosion and electromagnetic disturbances. Key benefits include durability, reliability and flexibility. Meanwhile, in the offshore sector Roxtec’s seals are an industry standard and are used in a broad range of oil and gas infrastructure, in some of the biggest projects in the world, including on drill ships, FPSOs, jack-up rigs, offshore support vessels and semi-submersible rigs.

Fire dampers are a critical safety product, says Marine Components International

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Written by Kari Reinikainen Kari Reinikainen

Category: Products & services Products & services

Published: 17 March 2020 17 March 2020

Andy Scott, Managing Director of Poole, UK,  based Marine Components International, has recently been given the global distribution rights for the A60 rated fire dampers produced by BSB Engineering. He says that while fire dampers are mandatory for ships above 500 gross tons, they are often overlooked on smaller vessels. A spate of superyacht fires recently has focussed on the benefits of this basic technology.

The term ‘fire damper’ is a bit misleading as it has nothing to do with water. Instead, it is best described as ‘a device installed in air transfer ducts and designed to close automatically on the detection of excessive heat.’ The metal construction and tightly fitting blades ensure that any fire, or smoke, is prevented from moving from one compartment to the next, and so buys more time for firefighting and evacuation.

The most basic types consist of a steel frame, either circular or rectangular, in which there are a set of articulating metal blades. In normal operation, these are held open by a spring with a fusible link, usually rated somewhere between 165oF to 286oF. However, when a specified temperature is reached, the heat burns through the link and the blades snap shut. Basically, it is a pretty failsafe arrangement.

The dampers are installed in a heating, ventilation or air conditioning (HVAC) duct at – or very near – the point where it passes through a fire-resistant bulkhead. The ideal location is actually embedded in the bulkhead itself where it can create a fireproof seal, so if the ducting falls away, the damper remains solidly in place.

Obviously, fire dampers have been modified and improved over the years and can be pneumatically or electrically operated, defaulting to the closed position if there is a loss of power. They can also double as smoke dampers, the latter very important in passenger vessels as smoke inhalation is usually the biggest killer. Smoke detectors can be linked directly to the actuators. Connecting the dampers to a central fire control board allows the bridge crew to isolate the area around the fire whilst keeping populated areas ventilated.

Electrical management also allows the dampers to be closed ‘dynamically’ against any airflow from an HVAC system. The minimum rating for all dynamic fire dampers is 2,000 ft3 per minute. The dampers can also be opened to allow reverse pressure to be fed into a blazing compartment.

Whilst only larger ships need to fit these dampers by law, increasingly smaller vessels are now carrying them as new builds or installing them as retrofits. This may be partly in response to a spate of dramatic yacht fires in recent years, luckily with no loss of life but with large insurance bills.

In 2019 alone, losses include a 36m Evo 120, berthed in an Italian marina, a 56m USCG cutter conversion, berthed alongside in Thailand and a 33m motoryacht anchored off the Balearics. Whilst the ignition source is often hard to pin down, the majority have been associated with electrical or engine room incidents. In each case, the fire spread rapidly though the vessel and reduced them all to smoking wrecks.

Meeting demand

There are several companies producing fire dampers for a variety of applications, from industry to maritime, and all meet a raft of stringent regulations. MCI is now entering this market for the sub and over 500GT categories aiming fire dampers at luxury yachts and commercial vessels.  MCI has recently been given the global distribution rights for the A60 rated fire dampers produced by BSB Engineering. Based in Kent, BSB manufactures nearly all of its components on site, and also adopts green practices in its large factory. The A60 certification is important as it means the dampers have met all the onerous class regulations imposed on charter vessels when it comes to fire-related equipment. As such, BSB’s A60 dampers meet everything from Lloyds Register Approval to the IMO’s Fire test procedures Code.

“The A60 dampers destined for yachts are generally quite a bit smaller than those you would find on commercial ships,” explained BSB’s technical adviser Rowland Cruttenden. “The most popular are the circular models, which can be as small as 100cm across. The largest go up to one metre across. All our models are made from either stainless or galvanised steel, and the blades are aerofoil in section. They are also hollow. This shape helps the flow of the HVAC system in normal use by reducing the pressure drop and fishtails the blades into a tight seal when closed. The heat of a fire causes the blades to expand, and they seal even tighter as a result. The hollow double skin acts as an insulator, and side seals hold back any smoke.”

As with other brands on the market, the dampers can be linked to a fire control system via electric actuators, so the closures can be managed from a central control station. They can also be switched for automatic operation via smoke or heat detectors, or the failsafe fuse link. “It is pretty much impossible to accidentally open a damper once it has shut in an emergency,” Cruttenden said. “But it is possible to override the system if absolutely necessary.”

MCI is choosing to stock the BSB range mainly due to the quick turnaround from order to delivery, but also because of the ability to customise. The yachting industry is very much in that mindset. Each hull tends to be built on a proven engineering platform to reduce construction time, now as little as 18 months for a 40m yacht, with the owner left to create the accommodation to their own design. The ability to customise fire dampers to a specific layout or unique HVAC system not only makes them very attractive in the leisure market, but also in the purpose-built commercial sector.

Vow to deliver waste management system for CSSC Carnival newbuild

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Written by Teijo Niemelä Teijo Niemelä

Category: Products & services Products & services

Published: 12 March 2020 12 March 2020

Vow ASA has, through its subsidiary Scanship AS, been awarded a contract with CSSC for the delivery of its waste management system including garbage handling and foodwaste processing to a cruise vessel to enter service in 2022 under the new brand CSSC Carnival; a joint venture between American cruise line Carnival Corporation & plc, Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation and the shipyard CSSC.

Scanship has earlier been awarded a contract for the delivery of its advanced wastewater purification system for the same vessel. CSSC Carnival has currently contracts with CSSC to build up to six vessels whereas two vessels are firm and four vessels are options.