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Slow Steaming in Maritime Transportation: Fundamentals, Trade-offs, and Decision Models

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Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics

Part of the book series: International Series in Operations Research & Management Science ((ISOR,volume 220))

Abstract

Slow steaming is being practised in many sectors of the shipping industry. It is induced principally by depressed shipping markets and/or high fuel prices. In recent years the environmental dimension of slow steaming has also become important, as ship emissions are directly proportional to fuel burned. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the practice of slow steaming from various angles. In that context, a taxonomy of models is presented, some fundamentals are outlined, the main trade-offs are analysed, and some decision models are presented. Some examples are finally presented so as to highlight the main issues that are at play.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Triple-E stands for Economy of scale, Energy efficiency and Environmentally improved performance.

  2. 2.

    Such a reconfiguration may involve dropping a cylinder from the main engine or other measures.

  3. 3.

    This is 24 times the speed in knots. We use this unit to avoid carrying the number 24 through the calculations.

  4. 4.

    A first order approximation is that f does not take into account the reduction in the ship’s total displacement due to fuel, lubricating oil or other consumables (such as fresh water) being consumed along the ship’s route, since displacement would not change much as a result of that consumption.

  5. 5.

    For a certain tanker route, WS is defined as 100 times the ratio of the prevailing spot rate on that route divided by the ‘base rate’ on that route (see Stopford (2004)).

  6. 6.

    Ships transiting Suez are grouped in convoys that transit the canal every several hours, therefore in practice this assumption may not always be correct.

  7. 7.

    For a cubic fuel consumption function, total fuel consumed (and hence CO2 produced) is proportional to the square of the speed, everything else (including payloads at each leg) being equal. 260(8/14)2 = 84.90.

  8. 8.

    The values of X specified by the IMO are 0 % for ships built from 2013–2015, 10 % for ships built from 2016–2020, 20 % for ships built from 2020–2025 and 30 % for ships built from 2025–2030. This means that it will be more stringent to be EEDI compliant in the years ahead.

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Acknowledgments

Work on this chapter has been supported in part by various sources, including Det Norske Veritas in the context of a project at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), the authors’ former affiliation, and the Lloydʼs Register Foundation (LRF) in the context of the Centre of Excellence in Ship Total Energy-Emissions-Economy at NTUA. LRF helps to protect life and property by supporting engineering-related education, public engagement and the application of research. This work has also been supported in part by an internal grant at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).

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  1. Department of Transport, Technical University of Denmark, Produktionstorvet 424, 2800, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark

    Harilaos N. Psaraftis & Christos A. Kontovas

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  1. Harilaos N. Psaraftis
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  2. Christos A. Kontovas
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Correspondence to Harilaos N. Psaraftis .

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  1. Dept. of Industrial Engineering & Logistics Mgmt, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

    Chung-Yee Lee

  2. Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Qiang Meng

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Psaraftis, H., Kontovas, C. (2015). Slow Steaming in Maritime Transportation: Fundamentals, Trade-offs, and Decision Models. In: Lee, CY., Meng, Q. (eds) Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 220. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11891-8_11

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