Company: PT Tanto Intim Line
Country: Indonesia
Application: Main Engines
Vessel: Container ship
Key Edge: Shell LubeMonitor and Shell Alexia 50
PT Tanto Intim Line (Tanto), a family owned, Indonesia-based cargo-shipping company, operates a fleet of more than 45 container vessels with a total capacity of 26,731 twenty-foot equivalent units. The company was using Shell Alexia 50 as cylinder oil for its fleet’s two-stroke engines but wished to reduce its lubrication costs.
Tanto engaged Shell Marine to investigate reducing its fleet’s lubricant consumption. Consequently, Shell Marine proposed a trial using Shell LubeMonitor, a cylinder condition monitoring programme designed to help customers to optimise their cylinder oil feed rate and thereby reduce overall operating costs.
The shipping company selected the Tanto Jaya for the trial. Shell Marine’s local distributor helped to educate and train the vessel’s crew on sampling procedures, conducting piston crown underside inspections and collecting the required data. Shell Marine then used the Shell LubeMonitor programme, which includes services from a Shell Rapid Lubricants Analysis laboratory, to measure the abrasive iron content in and base number of the oil samples. The data collected and the piston crown underside inspections were used as evidence to persuade Tanto that the cylinder oil feed rate could safely be reduced and thereby cut lubrication costs.
Subsequently, the cylinder oil feed rate for the Tanto Jaya was reduced from 420 to 396 l/d, which is a reduction of 24 l/d or 4,320 l/y for a projected, potential annual saving of about $12,420 for this vessesl.1 These savings may increase, as the programme to optimise cylinder oil feed rate is ongoing. The same solution applied across the rest of the Tanto fleet would increase efficiency and achieve the objective of cutting lubrication costs overall.
