How Much Cabin Space Can A Box Cooler Save?
The Box cooler bundle body hardly occupies the engine room; But space does not disappear out of thin air, but rather transfers to the hull structure of the sea chest
Traditional solution: Central cooler (shell/plate)+seawater pump+seawater filter+complete seawater pipeline and valves are all stacked inside the engine room.
Box cooler: The engine compartment only retains the flange interface of the tube bundle; The main body of the heat exchanger and the circulation of seawater are all placed at the subsea door outside the ship.
Actual space saved at the engine room end (taking 1000-4000kW main engine of small and medium-sized ships as an example)
1. Completely cancelled cabin equipment (freeing up all space)
1. Central cooler body
-Shell and tube central cooler: generally occupies an area of about 1.5-3.5 square meters, and also needs to reserve a distance for the maintenance and extraction of the extraction tube bundle (an additional 1-2 square meters of operating space in the axial direction).
-The plate type central cooler body occupies a small area, but a complete extraction operation space must be reserved in front of the disassembly and assembly plate.
2. Seawater pump set: seawater pump, base, shock absorber, 0.6-1.2 m ².
3. Seawater filter+seawater valve assembly: subsea valve, outlet valve, filter, 0.4-0.8 square meters.
4. Complete seawater pipeline: Coarse seawater pipeline, flanges, brackets, extensively laid along the side walls and bottom layers of the engine room, occupying gaps between corridors and equipment.
👉Comprehensive cabin saving: The effective cabin area is approximately 3-6 square meters; In addition, with the reserved space for maintenance, the total available space can be released up to 6-10 m ³ .
For ships such as tugboats, engineering ships, and fishing boats with already small engine rooms, the benefits of this space are very significant.
>On the cabin side, there is only a small installation position for the box cooler's bundle flange (a flange interface on the cabin side wall). The LT/HT fresh water circulation pump is still retained, and this part cannot be omitted.
Cost: Transfer of space to the hull (sea chest)
❌Not at zero cost, below the waterline on the side of the ship, a sea chest underwater door cavity must be designed:
-The volume of the underwater door cavity depends on the thermal load, usually 2-8 m ³;
-This structure occupies the side cabin capacity of the hull and belongs to the hull structure. It does not occupy the interior of the engine room, but occupies the external/side space of the hull;
-It is necessary to reserve space during the ship design phase, and it is difficult to add large box coolers for later modifications.
