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For the purpose of marine engineering, no operational environment is as complex as that presented on cruise ships. In order to enable these floating metropolises, the most extreme cooling requirements must be satisfied for propulsion, air conditioning, refrigeration, galley equipment, laundries, and the general comfort of the passenger-all of which must be contained within the least amount of space on any vessel in any category. Each square meter of machinery space must be accounted for, and a large amount of this space is occupied by the heat exchanger. High-efficiency compact Plate Heat Exchangers (PHEs) for cruise ship applications must therefore carefully incorporate the constraints of the entire system. SME Group's two-decade history in marine applications-having a portfolio that includes ICCP, MGPS, SED and PHEs-enables it to bring its unique perspective to the issue.
1. Space-Optimized Configurations for Crowded Engine Rooms
Engine Room Congestion: Cruise Ship Engine Rooms are a Real Squeeze On an ocean-going cargo vessel, engine rooms are generally commodious, providing ample room for the engine room machinery. However, designers of modern cruise ships have to squeeze the hull footprint to accommodate a significant number of main engines, auxiliary generators, shafting, thrusters and the immense amount of “hotel” systems on board, providing limited space for large heat exchangers. SME’s PHE designs are configured to provide the most thermal duty for the least foot-print, often 50-70% less footprint than a conventional shell-and-tube exchanger.
We approach design using a multi-duty integration philosophy. Rather than have to purchase an individual cooler for every system, SME engineers can engineer PHE banks with two, three, four, or more cooling duties all incorporated within one single frame. This allows engineers to place in a small footprint one shared exchanger that might do: main engine jacket water cooling, charge air cooling and even pre-heat your freshwater generator. We can accommodate any arrangement of piping connections and frame profiles that allow you to snake your way through a confined space, around existing piping systems or in those really awkward corners. With over 5,000 sqm of workshop in Nantong City we machine each unit to within microns of the requested dimension, so that your new heat exchanger just slots into the available space and doesn’t force a costly mid construction change.
2. Weight Reduction and Vibration Damping for Passenger Comfort
Weight The weight of heat exchangers, for a ship application, is of significant importance as it affects ship stability, fuel consumption, as well as its ability to carry additional cargo or passengers. Heat exchangers are made out of lightweight materials like a thin titanium or stainless steel plate whereas their conventional counterparts are made of a heavy cast iron body and a thick walled shell and tube exchanger.
Weight, however, isn’t the only factor that impacts on a vessel’s comfort. Hull-borne transmission of noise and vibration, often experienced in cabins near engine rooms, can be highly irritating to passengers. Our PHE frames are built with integrated anti-vibration mounts and acoustic attenuation to limit structure-borne noise. And with compact plate profiles to minimize fluid induced pulsing, a cause of low-frequency hum in conventional heat exchangers, SME contributes in more subtle ways to overall passenger comfort on the high seas. It's an area on which cruise lines invest significant amounts of capital in order to win guest loyalty. Adding our SED to combat stray current noise and our ICCP system for hull protection completes SME's system for calm, efficient ships.
3. Hygiene, Cleanability, and Food-Grade Compliance
The large volume catering and food preparation systems aboard a cruise ship involve cooking and cooling, necessitating pasteurizing units and the generation of hot water to exacting standards of hygiene. The natural hygienic design features of the plate heat exchanger make it ideally suited to this function. Bacteria do not readily adhere to smooth, highly polished plate surfaces and the ability to disassemble the plate pack to allow thorough high-pressure cleaning is invaluable.
SME offer a range of PHEs specifically for cruise ship hotel systems, including options with food grade gaskets and finishes which meet global sanitary standards, as well as large port designs which avoid dead zones for sediment and bio growth. Our PHEs for potable water systems can be cleaned and sterilized with chemicals, and do not need to be stripped down, for our MGPS systems for the protection of sea water intakes against biofouling, keeping cooling water clean and minimizing the foul load on board heat exchangers. Our ISO 14001 registered environmental management system assist with meeting ever stricter environmental standards for discharges and emissions.
4. Redundancy, Modularity, and Uninterrupted Operations
If a cargo ship’s cooling fails, it can be days before the cargo is shipped, but a cruise ship’s is out of order and you’ll have thousands of dissatisfied passengers and the ‘unreliable cruise line’ label to overcome. Reliability and redundancy aren’t an option; they’re a requirement. SME has a design philosophy to incorporate redundancy into cruise ship PHEs, with a unique approach to ‘partitioned’ plate packs, allowing a cooling system to be effectively split into several ‘independent’ sections and still run at 50% capacity if a section is isolated for repair.
The optional changeover valve systems are available for rapid changeover from the duty to standby PHE units for maintaining continuity of operation during maintenance, cleaning or repair. The individual plate replacement option means that a faulty plate can be changed at the ship, thus avoiding the inconvenience and delay of sending an entire unit to a workshop when far from your home port. And with SME’s worldwide service network and technical experts on standby at all of the worlds shipyard sites including those throughout mainland China, cruise operators can depend on an urgent response whenever it’s required. Supported by a quality management certified ISO 9001/14001/45001 system, every PHE supplied to cruise operators represents our commitment to unsurpassed quality for the utmost in reliability, safety and efficiency.