The Large Oil Tanker Safety Control Technology

Since sixties last century, due to the mass exploitation and export of petroleum in Middle East and developed countries' increasing dependence on the petroleum because of their fast developing economy, maritime petroleum transport has developed prosperously, and the scale and the single capacity of oil tankers have also increased greatly, thus large-scale and super large-scale types have become the orientation for the design and manufacture of oil tankers. However, serious oil tankers accidents have also followed, which have caused great damage to people's lives and property as well as the ocean ecology environment. Therefore, the safety problem of oil tankers has attracted a lot of attention from shipowners and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Meanwhile, the particularity of oil tankers' cargo also needs higher level of safety requirement. Through further investigation, it is found that both the unreasonable distribution loading and static electricity are main reasons for serious oil tankers accident. With the large-scale oil tanker as the research object, aiming at increasing oil tankers' operation safety through adopting effective preventive measures for accidents from unreasonable distribution loading and static electricity, this thesis attempts to make a research on the computerized distribution loading and inert gas system simulation for large-scale oil tankers.This paper is mainly composed of the following two parts: 1. The computerized distribution loading of the oil tanker. To make sure the tanker can navigate safely, the distribution loading must be precisely calculated to ensure that the tanker is of proper floating condition and stability and can avoid excessive total longitudinal bending. The thesis put forwards the computerized distribution loading methods for the oil tanker to improve the technology state of shipboard and make sure the tanker navigates safely. In addition, with the relevant hydrostatic knowledge, this thesis establishes a concrete mathematic calculating model for the oil tanker's floating condition,stability and intensity in order to easily determine the distribution loading planning and ensure the safety in the loading and transport process.2. The simulation research on inert gas system of oil tankers. This part first concerns the collection of some large-scale oil tankers' cases caused by static electricity, and makes a statistics, analysis and summarization about these cases, thus confirms that static electricity is an important fire origin. Then, through analyzing the process (including the generation, the accumulation as well as the discharge of static charge) of such cases and the danger during loading process, the thesis demonstrates the effective preventive method by using inert gas. Then the author introduces the development process of inert gas system on oil tankers and relevant international regulations, conducts an analysis of fireproof and explosion-proof features of inert gas system and makes an anatomy on the equipment and system requirements of flue gas system and inert gas system respectively. Lastly, the author carries out a simulation research on the equipment of the inert gas system on oil tankers, and with Visual Basic, the author develops a set of software system including flue gas system and inert gas system, which can be used as facility for special training for oil tankers' staff or as teaching assistant software in maritime universities.Owing to the limitation of time, this set of system has not been well-developed and thus still needs to be improved through further research to enforce its availability to oil tankers.