CT Marine Designs Enginerooms With Safety ‘Nonnegotiable’

Planning for an engine that is safe and efficient starts with designing a boat that is both of those things as well, according to CT Marine.

The Maine-based naval architecture firm has designed every towboat operating on the Mississippi River more powerful than 6,600 hp. since 1988.

Engineroom design, in particular, has undergone vast changes in the past 20 years, CT Marine owner Christian Townsend said.

“In my opinion, one of the largest changes to enginerooms in the last 20 years is the incorporation of 3D modeling design software such as Ship Constructor or Cadmatic,” he said. “This allows the naval architect and engineers to build the vessel many times over before we cut steel, refining the design so that every system aboard is optimized for the crew, owner and intended operation of the vessel.”

3D design software allows designing components to within 1/32 of an inch, Townsend said.

“With virtual reality, you can walk through a boat before it’s even built and make sure that those valves are at the exact right height and that pump is accessible and you can pull the gear out and change the exhaust lagging,” he said.

Designed For Safety

Townsend said the company typically spends 10,000 to 15,000 hours on a design, with much of that time spent on the upper and lower enginerooms.

“Every valve, pump, filter, etc., is placed in ergonomic positions so that we reduce the possibility of injuries,” he said. “We spend an immense amount of time to make sure the crew can navigate around the engines, gears and pumproom in a manner that is efficient and safe. Crew safety in the engineroom is the most important design aspect for CT Marine, and so we continually refine the enginerooms to achieve the safest environment possible.”

Part of that design means allowing at least 30 to 36 inches of clearance anywhere a crew member might need to go, Townsend said.

“We want the crews and engineers and those working on the engines or scrubbing the floors or whatever to be able to get around that engineroom without touching anything, essentially,” he said.

Sometimes, he said, it’s necessary to set up permanent staging around engines on larger horsepower vessels to avoid pinch points for the crew.

“It’s paramount to have open access around all this machinery without getting close to it,” Townsend said.

 He said he thinks about engineroom design not only for when everything in the engineroom is working well but also how to allow escape in the event of an emergency where the lighting may have failed. That’s one reason enginerooms have two or three exits, he said.

Additionally, he said one aspect unique to CT Marine designs is that the company splits its pump rooms into a “dirty side” and a “clean side” so that someone isn’t working on an oil filter right beside a clean drinking water filter. Pumprooms are also always separated from enginerooms, he said. 

Stairwell designs are also important, Townsend said, with CT Marine’s stairwells built a full 3 feet wide and never built steeper than 45 degrees. They are made so that if someone trips and falls, they can’t fall any farther than a half flight of stairs, he said. Stairwells are also designed to connect all the way from the top to the bottom of the boat, without having to traverse any hallways in between, which means they can be evacuated easily in the event of a fire.

“We apply as much safety as we can in the boat, and it’s nonnegotiable,” Townsend said.

While 3D design and virtual reality help, real-world experience in the engineroom is also important to the firm. That’s part of the reason CT Marine naval architect Scout Townsend, Christian’s son, spent part of his summer break from college on Hines Furlong Line’s mv. Ron Hunter, a CT Marine-designed 8,000 hp. twin-screw towboat. He worked alongside senior engineer Tim Kilburn.

When Scout asked Kilburn for his thoughts on engineroom design, Kilburn said, “I think, to me, the biggest evolution when going from mechanical engines to electronic, Tier 4 and Sub M is companies now update engines, clean and paint enginerooms so oil leaks, etc., can be seen quickly.”

Subchapter M also requires fuel shutdowns to all headers and has greatly reduced the possibility of fire, he said.

Rahul Gawas, senior project manager for CT Marine and Hyperion Marine Group, CT Marine’s sister company, said Subchapter M led to higher safety standards across the board.

“Fire and fuel oil systems can now be operated remotely from outside the engineroom,” he said. “Steering and propulsion systems can be operated from the engineroom, and engineroom equipment such as lighting, cabling, motors, etc., are now all USCG-approved.”

Propulsion Changes

One of the naval architecture challenges of the future will be designing boats that can run on different kinds of fuel, Townsend said.

Some of the first changes to hull design came with accommodating Z-drive systems, he said. Now, companies are asking about designs that incorporate batteries, especially for smaller horsepower harbor boats and ferries.

“I don’t think that’s going to be the final destination, but that’s probably the first step,” he said.

Water-cooled batteries avert the fire dangers that can be associated with air-cooled batteries in vessels, he said, preventing thermal runaway. With water-cooled batteries, he said, fuel cells on either side of a faulty battery can be used just a few hours later if a fire was to break out.

While batteries may be of interest now, other fuels are likely to be used in the future, Townsend said. CT Marine has spent some time studying liquefied natural gas (LNG) as one possible fuel. Hydrogen is also of interest.

“Probably none of the new boats is going to have diesel engines in them 20 years from now,” Townsend said.

Planning For The Future

Scout Townsend said that in the naval architecture program at the University of Michigan, where he studies, there is a significant emphasis on researching alternative fuels and reducing emissions. Because towboats have less horsepower than blue-water vessels and more ability to reach shoreside services on short notice, he said there is an opportunity for the design of brown-water vessels to lead the way in decarbonization.

Artificial intelligence is also likely to play a role, Christian Townsend said. As an example, he talked about a battery system on a vessel that could be monitored around-the-clock electronically with backup from engineers based around the world.

“If there are 1,000 different battery cells on the boat, they can tell me that cell 400 is heating up, and they’re going to shut it down,” he said.

He expects data mining from computers monitoring the engineroom to become more and more prevalent. Looking at the possibilities for the future, Christian Townsend said, while he thinks pilots will always be needed, there may come a time where in normal pool conditions, “you can probably operate these boats from your living room.”

Scout Townsend said, as boats become more and more linked to technology, he can also see the jobs aboard vessels changing, perhaps eventually requiring training and some kind of certification or licensing of dedicated engineers aboard every vessel.