Design of Energy Saving Controllers for Central Cooling Water Systems

Abstract

Since fuel prices account for approximately 40% of a ship’s operating costs, shipping companies worldwide have made significant efforts to save energy on board such as introducing new technologies or machine operation methods. Many ship operators have adopted an advanced control system using a variable-speed pump and/or an optimizing control system of a three-way valve on the outlet side of the central cooling system. It is often considered that the best way to control a central cooling system is to integrate the two control systems. However, when applied in practice, there is a frequent uncontrollable phenomenon in which the three-way valve is opened to its minimum and the variable-speed seawater pump is operated at its maximum, resulting in a large amount of energy consumption. Therefore, in this study, the speed of the variable-speed seawater pump is set to the minimum, and the feed-forward controller is adopted for the three-way valve control system. The input variable of the feed-forward controller is the Main Engine load, and it is designed to directly control the bypass openness with the three-way valve controller. Using this design, it was demonstrated that the variable-speed seawater pump was operated at a minimum and energy was saved.