A New Approach to Cylinder Lubrication in Large Two Stroke Marine Engines

Abstract

This paper begins by summarising the impact of marine engine emissions on the atmosphere and goes on to suggest that it may be posible to reduce emissions from large two stroke marine diesel engines by seperating the functions of cylinder-lubrication and cylinder-corrosion control. A feedback-controlled system to supply lubricant to the cylinder, which could be combined with a seperate device to supply additive to neutralise sulphur-based corrosion products is described. Such an arrangement allows the requirements for satisfactory hydrodynamic lubrication and corrosion management to be met independently. Modelling, using computer simulations has been used to investigate some effects of controlling the amount, timing and injection position of the lubricant supply. This has suggested that there are a range of possible control approaches to ensuring hydrodynamic lubrication while reducing lubricant consumption and development work on a small scale engine to evaluate these ideas has begun.