An early-stage approach to optimise a marine energy system for liquefied natural gas carriers: Part A - Developed approach

摘要

Developing design tools to make more information available sooner is desirable because decisions of the greatest impact are made in early stages of ship design. Moreover, there is still room for improvement in the optimisation of energy system selection considering an integrated approach. Therefore, the present work aims to provide a comprehensive early-stage approach to optimise the design, synthesis and operation of a marine energy system for liquified gas carriers, considering their economic and technical aspects, and also weather along the route. Constraints are used to avoid propellers that could present issues concerning strength, cavitation and vibration. Various propellers, engines and operational profiles can be assessed with this approach. A differential evolution optimisation algorithm that maximises the net present value is applied. This part of the study details the approach that we have developed, while the case study, results and discussion, and the main conclusions are given in Part B. Different parameters can be set up in each route-track, which enables various operational profiles and sea conditions to be considered to seek the highest net present value. The proposed approach is expected to be able to automatically search a broad range of possible alternatives and then make small refinements to achieve the optimal arrangement.