Effectiveness of Crankcase-Oil Mist Detectors

Abstract

Oil mist detection system is one of commonly used safety aids to monitor and detect engine’s critical conditions in early stages, to protect engines from serious damages and to prevent catastrophic consequence like crankcase explosions. Therefore, this research attempt to assess the effectiveness of this system to measure if it is serving the aim that it is designed for or not and to assess the effect of the different measuring techniques used on the performance. Moreover, this research investigates whether the effectiveness is positively affecting the market share among other systems, and if the action taken by the system to protect the engines posing no other risks on the ship. A questionnaire based study to investigate the research question is conducted where a sample of 126 ships had participated, the sample included mix of different types of ships with different types of engine sizes and different oil mist detector makers using different measuring technique. Collected data from the sample are analyzed according to quantitative data analysis approaches. The main findings shows that oil mist detector is an effective aid in alerting engine operators about abnormal conditions and therefore i t is used on 94% of the sample, it is also found that performance of the device is affected by the measuring technique. The research concluded that scatter light technique significantly improved the performance of oil mist detectors. But, linking the system to the engine shut down system pose another risk to the ship operation, therefore, the study proposed a future research on dynamic system for inerting engine crankcase to overcome this risk.