Review on Recent Advances for Marine Turbocharger Technologies

Abstract

The study addresses the recent advances within the turbocharging technologies for two-stroke marine diesel engines and their advantages and disadvantages. The study also investigates which technologies will be of interest for future developments and most suitable for twostroke engines. Emphasis is also put on the environmental impact of the shipping industry since it is responsible for the majority of the world trade and a large portion of the yearly global emissions. Two-stroke engines are dominant in the marine industry thanks to the power density and reliability. However, two-stroke engines are also quite insensitive to fuel quality and therefore low quality fuels are often used which have environmentally damaging emissions. Since the fuel economy is of importance to shipping companies, slow steaming is currently a popular method due to the lowered fuel consumption. The current turbochargers installed on two-stroke marine engines are not optimized for slow steaming and can lead to poor combustion. In the background, a motivation is presented and in-depth details describe two-stroke engine characteristics, differences between four-stroke and two-stroke engine turbocharging and the turbocharger working principle. A literature study was performed in order to achieve results capable of answering the questions of this thesis. The study is based on existing material in the chosen field.